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Sophronius and the Miracles

John Moschus was born (ca. 550) at Aegae, in Cilicia, during the reign of Justinian I.¹ According to the short biographical prologue attached to some manuscripts of his opus, the Spiritual Meadow, he became a monk in the coenobium of Theodosius, in the Judaean desert.² Soon, however, he appears to have retreated to the Laura of Pharon, farther north, where Moschus himself claims to have spent a decade, and where several tales place him roughly in the period 568–78.³ It was perhaps here that he first encountered the sophist Sophronius, an educated Damascene who would become his disciple and lifelong companion.⁴ At the beginning of the reign of the emperor Tiberius II (r. 578–82), the pair visited the monasteries of Egypt, and upon their return Sophronius was in turn initiated as a monk of Theodosius.⁵ Thereafter, it appears, Moschus settled for another decade in the Laura of the Aeliotes, perhaps on Mount Sinai,⁶ and then spent the 590s in the Palestinian Nea Laura of Saint Sabas, where the biographical prologue places him in the same period.⁷ Upon the invasion of the Persians (603), however, he and Sophronius retreated from Palestine to “the region of Antioch the Great” and thence to Alexandria.⁸

At some point during this second sojourn in Alexandria, Sophronius contracted a painful disease of the eyes and was, according to his own witness, “tortured for many months” by a “sea of pain.”⁹ When Hippocratic physicians proved unable to alleviate his affliction and warned that blindness would soon result Sophronius set out for the shrine of Saints Cyrus and John at Menuthis, having heard of the saints’ reputation for miraculous healing.¹⁰ There, through a series of strange visions, he was eventually cured,¹¹ and thereupon determined to record the saints’ miracles as a record and thanks.¹²

The Miracles of Cyrus and John—which appears to have been composed between 610 and 614—consists of seventy short miracle narratives, composed in a basic narrative style but nevertheless punctuated with frequent rhetorical flourishes.¹³ Unusually for a hagiographer, Sophronius makes no pretenses as to the simplicity of his style, for while “not unaware that in the sacred telling of the miracles, a loose and relaxed style is more appropriate,” he nonetheless adopts “an intense one, so that through this the fervor, gracefulness, and intensity of the holy men toward the healing of the sick may be known.”¹⁴ The narratives are divided into three distinct groups, in accordance with the geographical origins of the subject: supplicants within the first group (Miracles 1–35) are Alexandrians; within the second group (Miracles 36–50) they are Egyptians and Libyans; and within the third group (Miracles 51–70) they are from farther afield: Palestinians, Constantinopolitans, Romans, and so on.¹⁵ While all the miracles follow the same basic narrative pattern, and all involve cures bestowed upon individuals, there is nevertheless considerable variation among the vignettes. Some supplicants are heretics, for example, and others pagans; some diseases are derived from natural causes but others from sin, demons, or magic; and some cures occur instantaneously through dreams yet others through certain prescriptions.¹⁶ Nearly all, however, occur within the context of the saints’ shrine at Menuthis, situated northeast of Alexandria in an area now submerged in Aboukir Bay.¹⁷

According to the details included in the Prologue that Sophronius attaches to the Miracles (and that appear in two anonymous Lives), Cyrus and John were martyred at Alexandria during the Diocletianic persecutions.¹⁸ Following the saints’ execution the Christian community transferred their relics to the Church of Saint Mark, where they remained until the reign of Theodosius II. Then, according to Sophronius, an angel appeared to the patriarch Cyril and commanded him to transfer the saints’ relics to the Church of the Evangelists at Menuthis, in order to combat a popular pagan shrine within the region (possibly the famed cult of Isis). There the saints not only set the goddess to flight but also submerged her temple under sand and sea.¹⁹

Sophronius’s account of the shrine’s establishment is seemingly authenticated by three extant sermons on the saints transmitted under Cyril’s name.²⁰ Critics of the Cyrillian tradition have nevertheless challenged that attribution, pointing instead to an alternative history of the shrine suggested in a Syriac source, the early sixth- century Life of Severus by Zachariah of Mytilene. Therein, in a digression devoted to religious activity at Menuthis in the late fifth century, Zachariah not only describes a (continuing) cult of Isis but conspicuously fails to mention Saints Cyrus and John, a failure that perhaps suggests that the shrine was in fact established later, and by an anti-Chalcedonian patriarch (hence Sophronius’s revisionism).²¹ In a magisterial study, however, Jean Gascou has not only challenged once again the Cyrillian attribution of the sermons but has also pointed to potential distortions within the account of Zachariah, whose picture of an un-Christianized Menuthis conveniently suits his purpose of demonstrating the antipagan zeal of the anti-Chalcedonians at Alexandria.²² Instead, Gascou has suggested that the shrine was first promoted in the late fifth century by the monks of the Metanoia, a monastery at nearby Canopus.²³

For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that Sophronius’s account of the shrine’s establishment is but one among several potential foundational stories (both then and now). Indeed, Gascou’s deconstruction of the Cyrillian tradition has pointed to yet more competing myths within the saints’ hagiographic dossier and, furthermore, to several rival centers of their cult at Alexandria. Thus, for example, the Constantinopolitan synaxarion assigns the saints’ inventio not to Cyril but to his predecessor Theophilus, while the Coptic synaxarion locates their final resting place not at Menuthis but at Mark’s (where an Arabic miracle of Cyrus similarly situates the saint’s thaumaturgic activity).²⁴ Immediately, then, the biographical details within Sophronius’s Prologue appear not as innocent statements of an uncontested tradition but as polemical claims designed both to promote Menuthis as the preeminent cultic center and to situate that center within a doctrinally clean history associated with the Chalcedonian Cyril.

This chapter, similarly, approaches the Miracles of Cyrus and John as a polemical text composed within a context of, and in opposition to, numerous competing discourses. It focuses, however, not on rival cultic centers or traditions within wider Alexandria but rather on competing models of cultic practice and belief internal to the Menuthis shrine itself. The saints’ clientele at Menuthis was both socially and culturally diverse, consisting of rich and poor, orthodox and heretic, believer and apathete.²⁵ All these supplicants brought to the shrine their own expectations of the saints, their own suppositions as to how best they might be appeased. Amid that polyphony, Sophronius’s text attempts not merely to celebrate the saints’ cult but to impose and to perpetuate particular models of proper cultic practice and belief. Such models, however, compete not only vertically (with the expectations of a culturally diverse clientele) but also horizontally (with the rival visions of other impresarios of the saints’ cult). Thus, the Miracles does not so much describe the Menuthis cult as offer the vision of a specific commentator, a vision which can moreover reveal much about his particular ideological concerns.²⁶

I argue here that Sophronius’s narratives of individual illness, saintly intervention, and final restoration are far more than mere entertaining tales. The fundamental questions that Sophronius is forced to address within those narratives—questions of cosmology, anthropology, soteriology—present his text not simply as a celebration of the saints but as a theological system that promotes both a model of proper cultic practice and a particular theological anthropology. Thus, when Sophronius’s subjects move from corruption (disease) through judgment (saintly intervention) to redemption (cure), they simultaneously replicate the soteriological movement of mankind. In expounding upon the mechanisms by which that movement is achieved, therefore, Sophronius sets out both a scheme for saintly appeasement and a strategy for salvation. From the perspective both of cultic practice and of soteriology, therefore, it is remarkable that the Miracles of Cyrus and John attributes minimal significance to liturgy and ecclesiastical hierarchy. In contexts where the saints’ supplicant is an anti-Chalcedonian heretic, the Chalcedonian eucharist here assumes a central function as a marker of conversion; but for an orthodox patient, the sole prerequisite of success before the saints is Christian virtue—perseverance, resistance to temptation, obedience—independent of communion. On the one hand, therefore, Sophronius recapitulates the concerns of his anti-Chalcedonian counterparts in the preceding period, who had elevated the eucharist as the central icon of the orthodox faith; but, on the other, he also recapitulates the eucharistic minimalism of Evagrius, Pseudo-Macarius, and their heirs, failing to conceive a permanent place for communion—and, with it, the outward realities of the Church—within the spiritual life. At both the practical and the theological level, Sophronius substitutes sacrament for asceticism, subordinating communion with Christ through the eucharist to communion with Christ through virtuous imitation.

IMPRESARIO OF THE SAINTS

Although the Persians did not cross the Euphrates until 610,²⁷ an anacreontic poem of Sophronius suggests that he and Moschus had come to Alexandria earlier, during the reign of Phocas (602–10).²⁸ If so, he and Moschus must there have witnessed nothing less than civil war, although both the Miracles of Cyrus and John and the Spiritual Meadow give no hint of it. In September 608, as a series of simultaneous provincial riots tore through the cities of the empire, an usurper, Heraclius, had launched from North Africa a coup against the emperor Phocas. That coup proceeded in two directions: Heraclius himself went across the sea to assail the capital while his cousin Nicetas went overland to seize Alexandria and thus to deprive Constantinople of the annona.²⁹ On the basis of our extant sources, we would know little of this Egyptian phase of the campaign—the pro-Heraclian Paschal Chronicle, for example, simply records that “in this year [609] Africa and Alexandria revolted”—if it were not for the fortuitous survival of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, which describes a protracted civil war in which Nicetas, having first seized Alexandria, gained the upper hand over Phocas’s hated lieutenant Bonosus in a dramatic battle before the city’s gates.³⁰ In the course of the war, we ascertain from elsewhere, the pro-Phocan patriarch of Alexandria, Theodore, was put to the sword.³¹

In his place was elected the Cypriot aristocratic layman John, to be known to tradition as “the Almsgiver.” The principal sources that later describe John’s life—two anonymous paraphrases of a Life by Moschus and Sophronius themselves, and a continuation of that same Life by Leontius of Neapolis—all attempt to excuse the election of their hero (who as both a layman and an outsider was ineligible to be patriarch). Thus the former sources claim that John’s virtuous life on Cyprus made him celebrated throughout the empire and that “under strong pressure from the emperor Heraclius and through the particular instigation of Nicetas [hupo tou basileōs Hērakleiou lian ekbiastheis eisēgēsei malista Nikēta] . . . but also with the approval of the entire Alexandrian populace he was raised as archbishop to the patriarchal throne”;³² while the latter source goes even further, stating that John’s accession was “truly by divine decree [psēphōi ouraniōi] and not ‘from men neither through men’ [Gal. 1:1].”³³ The origins of John’s association with Heraclius and Nicetas cannot be established conclusively—the former had perhaps encountered him en route to Constantinople via the islands³⁴—but soon that association would be confirmed through solemn oaths of friendship and mutual dependence, for at the beginning of his patriarchate John was, or became, the ritual brother (adelphopoiētos) of Nicetas,³⁵ a relationship that was further formalized when the patriarch became the latter’s children’s godfather (sunteknos).³⁶ Based on a rereading of an awkward passage within Leontius’s Life, Claudia Rapp, moreover, has made the tantalizing suggestion that John, along with Nicetas, became the sunteknos of Heraclius’s son and designated successor Heraclius Constantine at the latter’s baptism in the capital in 612/13.³⁷ John, therefore, was a political appointee and an intimate of the emperor’s cousin Nicetas, if not also of the wider imperial household.

From the Lives that derive from that of Moschus and Sophronius, written for the patriarch’s funeral in 620, the Almsgiver appears as an active Chalcedonian. Thus the fifth chapter of those Lives informs us that upon his election as patriarch John suppressed the widespread use of the theopaschite addition to the Trisagion, for although he discovered a mere seven chapels (euktēria) maintaining the orthodox rites, “through much diligence he provided that that number be increased to seventy, and there sanctioned the celebration of the immaculate offering [tēn amōmēton proskomidēn].”³⁸ As Vincent Déroche has pointed out, this means not that John found the numbers of Chalcedonian churches in decline and realized a rapid reversal of that same process (as is often said) but rather that he enforced the exclusion of the theopaschite addition from Chalcedonian churches that had adopted it.³⁹ That concern to preserve the strict doctrinal and liturgical boundaries between Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian communities was also manifested, the same texts claim, in the patriarch’s attitude to ordinations, for he demanded from those aspiring to clerical position “written confessions [libellous] for the preservation of the orthodox faith and the protection of all the proclamations set forth in the canons.” “Those priests who repudiated certain heresies, gave written confessions of their repentance, confessed the teaching of the orthodox faith, and both received the four ecumenical holy councils and anathematized all the heresies along with the heresiarchs, these [John] welcomed with open arms and restored as communicants in the catholic Church.”⁴⁰

John’s patriarchate was nevertheless remembered as a time of peace in anti-Chalcedonian circles, and it is probable that the emperor had charged him with that precise goal: that is, maintaining religious concord following the turbulent period of Heraclius’s rebellion.⁴¹ It is thus of considerable interest to note that the later Life of Leontius of Neapolis (composed ca. 641–42), which is conceived as an explicit continuation of that by Moschus and Sophronius, presents the pair as the patriarch’s most trusted advisors and doctrinal disputants.⁴² Thus one chapter of that Life states that “Toward the purpose of this celebrated man, which was wholly divine, God sent to him John [Moschus] and Sophronius, who were wise in the divine [theosophoi] and of everlasting memory [aeimnēstoi].” “They were truly useful counselors,” Leontius continues, “and he listened to them unquestioningly as if to fathers and celebrated them as especially noble and courageous soldiers for piety. They put their faith in the power of the Spirit and the Archshepherd; they launched an unceasing war with the Severans and the other impure heretics who were in the province; and like fine shepherds delivered many villages, but more churches, and in like manner monasteries, like sheep from the mouths of these beasts. And because of this the all-holy [patriarch] showed them above all especial honor.”⁴³

In another remarkable tale we are told that “Certain heretics called Theodosians came to his holiness seeking to ridicule him, who was wise in the things of God, as inexperienced in the sophistic and rhetorical arts, and to show him contempt as a fool.” Upon arriving the heretics confront him and ask, “How is it that, when you are patriarch, you believe in the faith and do not dogmatize about it but entrust your soul and your faith to the lips of others?”—making allusion, Leontius explains, “to John [Moschus] and Sophronius, the true lights.” With divine inspiration, the Almsgiver then asks his accusers if they have experienced everything that they believe or proclaim, and they confirm that “If we are not convinced of something through actual experience of it, then we not do believe in or proclaim it.” The patriarch then proceeds to ask whether they believe that the All-holy Spirit is present and descends upon the holy font and holy oblation (epiphoitai kai katerchetai to panagion pneuma eis tēn hagian kolumbēthran kai eis tēn hagian anaphoran), and when they answer yes, he asks, “What, then? Have you seen it with your own eyes?” “Even if we have not seen it,” they respond, “our fathers have.” “Well look, then,” John retorts, “you too believe from others in what you have not known or seen. And so why do you reproach me that I believe in something that I do not know how to proclaim and dogmatize about?”⁴⁴

In combination, the two Lives thus present the patriarch as a committed Chalcedonian, keen to preserve the liturgical and doctrinal boundaries between Chalcedonians and anti-Chalcedonians, but nevertheless avoiding active persecution and instead engaging with doctrinal dissenters through debate and through Moschus and Sophronius. Although this picture is constructed in retrospect, it nevertheless finds a complement in Sophronius’s Miracles of Cyrus and John, composed in the first half of John’s patriarchate. For here too we discover that same combination of concerns: on the one hand, a strict sacramental differentiation between orthodox and heretic; but on the other, a relative moderation in the denunciation of heretics and explicit promotion of Chalcedon.

Although Chalcedon receives but one explicit mention within the extant Greek text, in a series of central tales Sophronius nevertheless presents the saints as opponents of the enemies of the Chalcedonian settlement.⁴⁵ From these it becomes clear that the Menuthis shrine’s clientele was less homogenous in its doctrine than he may have cared for. At Alexandria, of course, the Chalcedonian shrine of Menuthis competed against the far grander and more celebrated anti-Chalcedonian cult of Menas at Mareotis.⁴⁶ We should not suppose, however, that all Alexandrian Chalcedonians patronized Menuthis and, vice versa, all anti-Chalcedonians Mareotis.⁴⁷ Whereas all Christian shrines regularly and very publicly proclaimed their particular doctrinal affiliation (through choice of clergy, the diptychs, the creed, etc.), such shrines were, it seems, nevertheless frequented by Christians of various doctrinal stripes, and those opposed to the official doctrinal position of a shrine could put into play various strategies of subversion or resistance through which to circumvent a shrine’s official confession.⁴⁸

Sophronius’s Miracles of Cyrus and John indeed describes those strategies in vivid detail. In Miracles 36, for example, a heretic Theodore comes to the saints and is encouraged by them to participate in the orthodox eucharist. “No, I shall not come,” he says. “For I am of another doctrine and not of the confession of the Church. Today I await my mother, who is bringing the gifts of my own communion.” Having refused to commune within the Chalcedonian Church, Theodore then requests the saints’ permission to take some oil from their tomb. “For many who are not in communion still do this,” Sophronius says, “taking the oil that burns in the candle instead of the holy body and blood of Christ, God and Savior of us all.”⁴⁹ Theodore, therefore, simply circumvents the shrine’s sacramental system by substituting the Chalcedonian eucharist for his own imported host and for the oil from the saints’ tomb. Similarly, in Sophronius’s Miracles 38 the heretic Stephanus is healed by the saints and converts to the Chalcedonian faith. His slave asks him, “Look, my lord, here we have obeyed the saints’ commands and have communicated with the catholic Church. But when (God willing) we take to the road home, shall we abide by their orders, or return again to how it was before?” Stephanus replies, “While we are here we act as the martyrs see fit, but when we depart from them we shall revert back to our own dogmas as before, and to the faith that our fathers handed down to us.”⁵⁰ In all instances, the saints punish all those who refuse to profess a (permanent) Chalcedonian confession.

In presenting the saints as Chalcedonians, Sophronius at the same time claims for himself a special cultic insight. His actual status within the saints’ cult at Menuthis, however, was no doubt more casual (and contested) than he might confess. A prominent ascetic and advisor to the Alexandrian patriarch, he nevertheless held no discernible position within the shrine’s staff. That ambiguous status in turn transfers to the text itself, for whereas certain features—such as the formulaic narrative endings that conclude most miracles⁵¹—perhaps indicate the text’s liturgical function (or at least its intention for that function), other characteristics point to an author engaged in an attempt to establish his own preeminence, and that of his text, within the cult.⁵² Indeed, the context of cultic competition with which the Miracles of Cyrus and John engages is immediately apparent: “Let each man honor the saints in his own way,” Sophronius says in his Prologue, “triumph in their gifts by various means, and herald their good deeds in multiple ways: some with the erection of mighty temples and others with the adornments of various marbles; some with compositions of resplendent pebbles, others with bright arts of painters; and some with offerings of gold and of silver, others with silk or silken robes. To put it simply, let all strive toward the honor of the martyrs, according to each man’s capacity and desire. And in these things let each seek to outdo the other and display the love that is within them for the saints.” Sophronius then proclaims his own project superior, for he will honor the saints with the word (logos), “more precious than any earthly substance, inasmuch as it pours forth not only from the material tongue but also from the spirit.”⁵³ In particular, Sophronius appears to vie with one Christodorus, a cleric and the shrine’s steward (oikonomos), a patriarchal appointment.⁵⁴ In Miracles 8, Sophronius describes him as “worthy of remembrance not only through the virtue that he obtained (for he was very much a lover of virtue and of learning) but also because of the earnestness and diligence that he showed toward the saints, and the favor of the martyrs toward him.”⁵⁵ Yet the cumulative picture is somewhat less sycophantic. At one point, for example, Christodorus’s secretary (notarios), Menas, is revealed (and punished) as an anti-Chalcedonian heretic, perhaps thus implicating the orthodox credentials of the steward himself.⁵⁶ Elsewhere, furthermore, Christodorus is presented as irresolute and ignorant. In Miracles 31, for example, upon the completion of a miracle, “Christodorus was amazed,” Sophronius tells us, “for he was completely unaware of what was happening.”⁵⁷ In similar circumstances in the subsequent miracle Sophronius claims (somewhat unnecessarily), “But Christodorus was ignorant (for he learned everything later from a child).”⁵⁸ Sophronius thus sets his own cultic insight (through mastery of his narratives and their meanings) against the ignorance of the shrine’s preeminent cleric.⁵⁹

That claim to special cultic status is constructed also through the collection’s proclaimed methodology. The seventy miracles that Sophronius selects are, he says, “brought together from the innumerable mass, like a few countable drops compared to an inestimable sea.”⁶⁰ Yet, he says, “I shall not recall those miracles that happened long ago, nor shall I relate those that occurred in the too distant past, lest I refuse the aid of time, and the haters of God are able to reject them. I shall instead write down the things that occurred in my own time, some of which I saw personally, and others of which I heard about from others who had seen them. Indeed the majority of those who suffered (or rather were cured) are still alive with us, look upon the sun, and engage in present business. They provide witness of the truth to me and have reported these things to me with their own mouths (both for the glory of God and for the honor of the saints). But some had already gone to the Lord and were released from affairs here below. These had announced the things that had happened to them to many people and thus left behind for me reliable witnesses of the things that were said—that is, those who had both seen and heard them happen.”⁶¹ Against “pagans” who might doubt the truth of his narratives, Sophronius again reiterates his personal experience of the saints’ miracles: “Whereas before I had only heard about [the saints’] grace (like all those who are separated from their temple by a great distance), now also I became a witness to the truth of the things that I had heard. For I went to them on account of a disease of the eye (as was said previously), and I myself was cured and saw others reaping their cures.”⁶² Sophronius thus claims both for himself and for his narratives an authority based both in personal experience and in meticulous (verifiable) investigation.⁶³

Sophronius presents the saints as the eager patrons of his project. The truth (and thus authority) of his narratives is thus established both by detailed inquiry on the ground and by divine verification from above. His text is presented as the cult’s official history, inspired by the saints and mediated through the pen of their select impresario:⁶⁴

Not knowing what to do, I fled to the martyrs and asked them what needed to be done in their service. And they welcomed the purpose of my zeal and did not dishonor it for its rashness but committed to me the task of writing and agreed to confer their help. And so they often appeared to me as I wrote, fulfilling their promise. At one point they provided me with ink and pen; at another they took my parchment and corrected my errors. Sometimes also they took pleasure in my tales, and their faces lit up with joy, for they experienced in the telling the pride that we often feel when we come to words or to passages that are rather pleasing. Countless times they rebuked me while I was engaged in other pursuits and chastised me for being negligent. They said, “For how long will you leave the truth unfulfilled?” and they called the present writing, the encomium in their honor, the truth.

Imbued with divine approval, Sophronius’s text assumes an extraordinary supernatural status of its own: “There is vast benefit in the recounting of miracles. In like manner it benefits all those who hear it and strengthens their souls with their bodies. To their souls it bestows a more abundant faith and to their bodies an aversion from somatic disease, and equally to both bodies and souls a pure and long-desired cheer and a pleasure full of spiritual exultation that a speech is not able to convey to its audience.”⁶⁵ The Miracles of Cyrus and John, then, is so implicated within the saints’ cult that it recapitulates within its audience the saving power of the saints.

Sophronius’s purpose in composing his Miracles of Cyrus and John, therefore, is complex. Far from simply celebrating Cyrus and John, he attempts also to establish Menuthis both as a Cyrillian foundation and as the preeminent Alexandrian center of the saints’ cult (as Gascou has observed). At the same time, and in the face of a doctrinally diverse clientele, the Miracles presents orthodox (Chalcedonian) faith as essential to a successful supplication and chastises those heretics or pagans who attempt to circumvent that same imperative. Through constructing that normative paradigm of cultic belief, moreover, Sophronius claims a special status as commentator on the saints’ cult. Against rivals who honor the saints in various ways, he offers his text as the highest form of praise and positions himself as superior to other cultic authorities. His Miracles, therefore, cannot be conceived in simplistic terms as the shrine’s official memory but rather as one of several competing visions of the saints’ cult (both written and oral), visions through which rival authorities attempted to impose their own particular interpretations of the cult’s history, doctrine, and practice.⁶⁶ Thus, just as the dominant Cyrillian foundational myth cannot be regarded simply as the Menuthis cult’s official history, neither can Sophronius’s text be viewed uncritically as the shrine’s official literature.⁶⁷ The Miracles, like other equivalent collections, should instead be considered as a polemical text composed within a context of, and in opposition to, numerous competing discourses.

MEDICINE AND MIRACLE

The attitudes that Sophronius and other such miracle writers attempted to instill within their audiences were not limited to questions of religious adherence but embraced a whole range of issues both practical and theological.⁶⁸ Within their narratives, those authors instructed supplicants in various aspects of a cult’s existence, including the most immediate and mundane of demands—not chattering at night, in one memorable tale.⁶⁹ Here, however, we first focus on one particular concern of all such authors: that is, the provision of appropriate attitudes to Hippocratic medicine. Over time the authors of saints’ miracles became increasingly hostile to secular medicine, but the Miracles of Cyrus and John, while punctuated by intermittent assaults on secular physicians, in fact partakes of a long-established (and orthodox) Christian tradition that attempted not to suppress but rather to include Hippocratic medicine within Christian narratives.⁷⁰ Sophronius’s complex but careful integration of that medicine reveals him as the most thoughtful of all miracle authors, and at the same time presents his text not as a simple hagiographical narrative but rather, in the words of Christoph von Schönborn, as “a sort of ‘implicit catechism.’”⁷¹

Where in earlier collections of healing-saint miracles the failure of doctors to cure a disease is presented as a matter of fact rather than an occasion for comment,⁷² Sophronius’s Miracles of Cyrus and John is punctuated by (sometimes savage) indictments of secular physicians. The theme is established in the preface and continues unabated to the final, autobiographical notice in which Sophronius describes his own miraculous cure.⁷³ As in the earlier miracle collections, such criticism is often directed at perceived abuses on the part of physicians. Thus in the opening miracle a patient’s doctors, though unable to diagnose the disease, “nevertheless investigated it thoroughly in their desire to be paid, so that they might procure the payment of all payments in silver and a glory better than their credit.”⁷⁴ In Miracles 32, again, certain doctors “practiced their art upon [the patient], knowing that he would not prevail or banish the illness but nevertheless deceiving the poor man in hope of payments.”⁷⁵ This critique of medical avarice continues throughout the collection, but most damning, perhaps, is Miracles 69. Sophronius describes how a patient who becomes blind was “no longer able to be a bother to the doctors, not only since he learned that he would no longer see but because he ran out of money with which to service them.”⁷⁶ In contrast Saints Cyrus and John are anarguroi, “the silverless ones.”⁷⁷

Sophronius often expounds also upon the uselessness of medical procedures. Confronted with the failure of doctors to relieve a patient in Miracles 19, for example, he says, “Thus [the doctors] show [the disease’s] natural perversity, which no fine-powdered or efficacious remedy, no green-anointed plaster, no antidote ascribed to Philo, nor any other natural aid, either unmixed or made from the combination of different elements, has been able to calm up to this very day.”⁷⁸ The same is repeated at Miracles 23: “But the doctors could offer no help to Gennadius, even though they used many unguents, various scourings, bloodletting, purges, and all their other aids.”⁷⁹ Sophronius reserves his most venomous assault, however, for those most celebrated of ancient medical authorities, Hippocrates and Galen. In Miracles 13 (a case of leprosy) Sophronius tells us that “here Hippocrates, Galen, and nature’s bastard brother Democritus were of course useless, and with them those who take pride in their words and offer us their names in place of grand remedies.”⁸⁰ And again Miracles 19: “But the doctors, and their founders Hippocrates and Galen, clever pride of their profession, are not ashamed to proclaim [that profession] inferior, and not only refuse to wage war on the cancerous disease but even crown it the victor.”⁸¹ Throughout the collection, a doctor’s consultation of Hippocrates and Galen, and the application of their recommendations, often prove futile.⁸²

While antagonism toward the medical profession thus pervades Sophronius’s collection, it can nevertheless be mitigated by contextualization. It should be noted from the outset that the Miracles of Cyrus and John makes no attempt to oppose or to obfuscate rational causes of disease, for Sophronius readily recognizes the natural derivation of most somatic disorders. Thus in Miracles 15, elephantiasis is described as “an inhuman disease, which of all the bodily illnesses is the greatest and most bitter.”⁸³ In Miracles 58, a rich and noble man falls into “a difficult illness, for the properties of nature do not spare such men, even if they think they are different from their fellow man because of the aforementioned advantages.”⁸⁴ And, again, in Miracles 64, a mute is said to suffer from a “congenital illness, not one derived from some other disease over time but produced in him from birth itself.”⁸⁵ This recognition of natural etiology allows also for the recognition of Hippocratic medicine. Thus in a discussion on dropsy Sophronius states that doctors “are not able to provide any benefit, neither great nor small, to anyone who falls into this condition, nor to bestow any reassurance from their profession, which they do in the case of nearly all other illnesses, healing some perfectly.⁸⁶ Furthermore, whereas certain (perhaps most) doctors are corrupt charlatans, others nevertheless provide genuine relief. For example, Sophronius describes one Theodore, “a doctor, and of good standing in terms of his profession, and because of this very famous. But through magic he became immobile, and not knowing the cause of his disease, he hurried to heal himself, doing those things that he thought would cure him and that when he had applied had helped those suffering not from magic but from a slackness of the limbs.”⁸⁷

As the final example makes evident, however, not all diseases are of natural derivation. Some are induced through magic or through demons, and others still are the product of the subject’s spiritual condition.⁸⁸ The Miracles of Cyrus and John, in fact, sets out an explicit etiological system that distinguishes diseases derived from nature and those derived from sin. The crucial passage concerns a patient suffering from a disease of the testicles:⁸⁹

But [the patient] was perhaps ashamed at such an illness, and wanted to keep his infirmity hidden; but we have been commanded to feel shame not at the diseases of the body but rather those of the soul. . . . And the Lord said that those sent into eternal shame were not those weighted down by bodily diseases, for he himself has borne our infirmities and our illness [cf. Is. 53:4; Matt. 8:17], but rather those who are sick in the soul and the doers of evil. For some illnesses are involuntary, those of the body and known in relation to the body. Others are voluntary and products of our will [gnomēs hēmeteras kuēmata], those that damage the beauty of the autonomous and intelligent soul [psuchēs autexousiou kai noeras to kallos].

Sophronius thus makes a critical distinction between (unwilled) somatic disease as the product of nature and (willed) psychological disease as the product of sin.⁹⁰ Thus in the first miracle Sophronius describes how an arrogant young man, Ammonius, was afflicted with scrofula. However, “when [the saints] saw that the young man was proud and carried away toward arrogance in the conceit that comes from wealth, they cured the swelling of his soul before they put an end to the inflammations on his bodily neck.”⁹¹ In this particular instance, Ammonius’s psychological sickness (arrogance) is not connected with his physical disease (scrofula), for their remedies are separate.⁹² Often, however, the two are presented as interdependent, for certain (somatic) diseases are said to be the direct product of divine chastisement for (psychological) sin.⁹³

In all such instances (demons, magic, sin) the consequent diseases lie beyond the competence of Hippocratic medicine. Thus in Miracles 63 when a patient is afflicted by a demon (itself induced through magic), Sophronius offers the typical statement that “The affliction was beyond their [the doctors’] art, for the disease was curable by God alone and his divine healers, those to whom he has bestowed whatever abilities they wish.”⁹⁴ The saints, however, are able to alleviate all diseases: they are hoi sōmatōn kai psuchōn iatroi, “the doctors of bodies and souls,” “skilled in divine medicine, and not in what makes Hippocrates, Galen, and Democritus its founders—for these men speak from the earth.”⁹⁵ That superior competence, furthermore, includes those natural infirmities that are nonetheless incurable by man, so that while in certain cases the competences of Hippocratic and divine medicine overlap, that of the former is in the final analysis a mere subset of the all-encompassing power of the saints.⁹⁶

The careful integration of Hippocratic medicine within Sophronius’s scheme makes further aspects of the Miracles of Cyrus and John less problematic. His regular use of Hippocratic terminology (for example), his knowledge of medical procedures, and his frequent expositions on Hippocratic theory appear not disingenuous but entirely consistent with the broader integrative vision.⁹⁷ Sophronius’s epithet, “the Sophist,” of course implies a degree of medical education, and such erudition is indeed evident throughout his text. Indeed, a tale contained within Moschus’s Spiritual Meadow perhaps allows us to establish a more concrete link with the Alexandrian medical establishment, for Moschus recalls how, during their first sojourn in Alexandria, he and Sophronius “went to the house of Stephanus the Sophist to study.” (Or, in the so-called F manuscript of the Meadow, “to the house of Stephanus the Philosopher.”)⁹⁸ Wanda Wolska-Conus has argued that this Stephanus is identical with that celebrated medical commentator of the same name, a contemporary of Sophronius and active in late sixth-century Alexandria.⁹⁹ Although that conclusion is regrettably speculative, Wolska-Conus’s general conclusions—that Sophronius was not hostile to secular medicine, and furthermore that he “knew medicine such as had been taught at Alexandria in the sixth and seventh centuries”—remain valid.¹⁰⁰

Once this complex scheme is recognized, it allows Sophronius’s sporadic opposition to the medical profession to be appreciated more fully. As several scholars have emphasized, suspicion of, and hostility to, the medical profession is a common motif in ancient literature, unique neither to Christian hagiography nor to Christian texts.¹⁰¹ It is furthermore notable that nowhere in the Miracles of Cyrus and John is medicine subjected to critique as a system of knowledge (unlike, for example, astrological predestination), for natural diseases and natural cures are both recognized as elements of divine creation, and Sophronius himself employs Hippocratic reasoning.¹⁰² The criticism of secular medicine occurs only in contexts where doctors prove corrupt or attempt to overreach their own competence.¹⁰³

As in earlier collections, the superior competence of Saints Cyrus and John over secular physicians is established also through assimilation.¹⁰⁴ Thus the saints are frequently described as iatroi, their shrine is an iatreion, and sometimes the pair appears in the form of doctors.¹⁰⁵ Indeed, in addition to the standard supernatural cures familiar from other collections (in particular the application of oil from the saints’ shrine or physical contact with the saint in a dream),¹⁰⁶ the saints often prescribe material remedies drawn from a natural materia medica indistinguishable from that of Hippocratic medicine,¹⁰⁷ and that induces physiological effects that Sophronius describes using the lexicon of Hippocratic humoral theory.¹⁰⁸

Despite this recognition of Hippocratic medicine, and the frequent references to (quasi-Hippocratic) material cures (and their quasi-Hippocratic effects), Sophronius is nevertheless highly sensitive to potential accusations of the saints’ reliance upon Hippocratic method. Indeed, an entire tale is devoted to the refutation of that very charge. In Miracles 30 the iatrosophist Gesius is said to have “mocked the martyrs Cyrus and John as if they cured human disease from medical skill rather than from the highest divine power. For when he saw the remedies that they prescribed for the sick, which I have in part described, he pronounced them to be the teachings of the doctors. This aid, he said, was derived from Hippocrates, and these others too could be found in his writings; another remedy, he proclaimed, was from Galen, and lay in his corpus; another application, he said, was clearly from Democritus, and he recalled the very place where. And having heard of a plaster he immediately boasted that it was from some doctor, maintaining that everything spoken by the saints had been patched together from one doctor or another. And always he looked for the natural causes of illnesses and of the qualities of the things dispensed, [claiming] that these had been prescribed according to medical logic and [only thus] brought about the purging of the conditions.”¹⁰⁹ Then, however, Gesius is afflicted in his upper back (“as if from some divine anger”) and “not knowing the cause of the disease, he who had cured others did not know how to cure himself.”¹¹⁰ “But when he had done all the things that his profession recommended, and that Galen and Hippocrates and the swarm of other doctors had taught him, the disease had still not diminished.”¹¹¹

In due course Gesius is persuaded to visit Saints Cyrus and John, whose solution for his illness is somewhat ironic: “Take the packsaddle of a donkey,” they say, “and put it on, setting it around your aching shoulders, neck and arm. And during the middle of the day walk around our entire temple, and shout loudly ‘I am a moron and utterly stupid.’ And having done as we command, immediately you will obtain a cure for your body.”¹¹² Presented with this cure, Gesius is “unable to make sense of what combination and of what natural and essential quality these things are”, but nevertheless eventually complies and is duly cured.¹¹³ Then the saints demand, “Why do you want all the remedies that we bestow upon the sick to be discoveries of long-dead doctors? Tell us, where did your Hippocrates record the aid for your disease? Where did your precious Galen speak of it? Where did Democritus pronounce these things? Where have any of the other celebrated doctors recalled it? If you can find these things being said by them, then indeed you have spoken truly about them; but if you find no proof of them speaking such things, know then that you are mistaken about them.”¹¹⁴ Such qualifications indeed occur throughout the collection.¹¹⁵

For Sophronius, then, as for other miracle authors, the desire to emphasize the superior competence of the saints over Hippocratic rivals demands a clear differentiation of their modes of healing. If a somatic disease is of natural derivation, then it is curable by both doctor and saint (although, perhaps, using different remedies); where it proves to be the product of supernatural forces, however, or where secular physicians are unable to alleviate it, the saints alone are able to cure it. The purpose, then, is not to eliminate Hippocratic medicine as a system of somatic healing but rather to establish its subordination to the superior competence of the saints.

Recent research has emphasized the coexistence of several competing epistemologies in late-antique therapeutic culture and a subsequent pluralism of therapeutic options dependent upon a “hierarchy of resort.”¹¹⁶ Indeed, Sophronius and other miracle writers describe a culture in which a visit to the saints was considered only where medicine had failed, even in those instances where the saints had cured a patient before.¹¹⁷ In various instances, patients demonstrate an ability to draw on several nonexclusive systems of etiological explanation (nature, sin, demons, magic, etc.), and where one system proved unsatisfactory, another was substituted for it without contradiction.¹¹⁸

In acknowledging the pluralism of therapeutic options available to late-ancient patients, and in integrating such options within his intellectual scheme, Sophronius both recognizes and legitimizes the pragmatic realities of the therapeutic process. At the same time, his careful integration of secular medicine stands in stark contrast to the tone of another contemporary collection, the Miracles of Artemius, where medical practice is repeatedly lambasted without qualification,¹¹⁹ and where there is a heightened desire to differentiate the saint’s mode of healing from that of Hippocratic doctors.¹²⁰ Both emphases are concerned most obviously with competition, for the emphasis both upon Artemius’s specialization in diseases of the genitals, and upon his successful, sometimes painless surgeries, present incubation as a credible alternative to the painful, potentially fatal, and all-too-real operations performed under the knife.¹²¹ In an important contribution John Haldon has, however, argued that the “need to stress divine intervention and heavenly authority” within this collection (and in the seventh-century Miracles of Demetrius and eighth-century Miracles of Therapon) reflects “not just a concern to underline the effectiveness of the saint as patron, nor again a simple desire to emphasise the power of divine intervention in some general competition with Hellenistic medicine,” but rather promotes “a powerful hidden agenda . . . determined by the wider political and cultural contexts of the times.” While confessing that the precise etiology of disease is rarely discussed within the Miracles of Artemius, Haldon argues that “the impression gained . . . is that, whatever the ability or competence of doctors, maladies caused by spiritual infirmity can only be cured through recourse to the saint; maladies of uncertain origin are best dealt with by the saint, on the ground that impurity or weakness of spirit may well underlie them.” He thus observes how “explanations for sickness and its causes had a very specific political dimension, for the state or polity could also be seen metaphorically and allegorically in terms of the human body. The latter was a microcosm of the wider world. The question of the application of the correct cure could thus become a particularly acute issue—differences of opinion on how the human body became open to illness and disease, and what treatment was best prescribed, when transferred to the political level, would result in radically different suggestions for dealing with the maladies of state and society.”¹²² Heightened hostility to Hippocratic medicine thus represents a more pronounced differentiation of natural (rational) and supernatural (antirational) systems of causation, a differentiation driven by the perceived causes of, and supposed solutions for, the crisis of empire.

Haldon’s seductive argument, however, demands some qualification. For the proposed political metaphor to work, diseases within the Miracles of Artemius must all be (or must at least all be implied to be) the product of sin and divine punishment. Yet it is notable that the same text, like all other miracle collections, in fact preserves a dual etiological system in which certain diseases are attributed to natural derivation and others to supernatural derivation: some hernias, therefore, are said to be produced through lifting weights or stretching,¹²³ whereas others are presented as a punishment for sin.¹²⁴ No doubt all healing collections might still be read as political metaphor, for the message of all is to some extent the same: that the appeasement of God provides the solution to all maladies, whatever their precise origins. But in all the texts considered here (including the Miracles of Artemius), that same metaphor does not demand outright opposition to a rational system of causation (even if such opposition does occur in terms of modes of healing).¹²⁵ Indeed, the maintenance of an etiological framework that recognizes both the natural and the supernatural derivation of diseases is crucial for Sophronius, for it provides him with the intellectual basis to construct an alternative metaphor, more soteriological than political. Here the suffering body, as we shall see, is not so much a microcosm of empire; it is instead the summation of postlapsarian man.

NARRATIVES OF REDEMPTION

In order to understand the soteriological analogies that the Miracles of Cyrus and John constructs around its narratives of divine healing, let us revisit once again Sophronius’s conception of disease. Miracles 16 distinguishes between involuntary illnesses, “those of the body and known in connection to the body” and voluntary illnesses, “products of our will,” “deliberately chosen and not of necessity” (tōn tēs psuchēs proairetikōn kai ouk anankaiōn pathōn).”¹²⁶ This memorable distinction between somatic and psychological disease is an inheritance from the Greek philosophical and medical traditions, but it is presented here within a broader Christian scheme.¹²⁷ Thus somatic disease is presented as a product not only of creation but of postlapsarian creation. “Her affliction was terrible,” Sophronius tells us of a patient in Miracles 21, “for it was not natural like those many diseases that are caused by an excess of humors or generated by other occurrences, and that the body by necessity is allotted to serve after the transgression in Paradise.”¹²⁸ Such diseases, therefore, are emblematic of mankind’s broader corruption in the Fall. Thus in Miracles 14 Sophronius says, “Having tasted at origin from the tree of disobedience in Paradise, [the body] was naturally subjected to diseases, and while it lives it is a slave to corruption and to the pitfalls and properties of corruption, until the common resurrection of all.”¹²⁹ Hence Sophronius’s insistence that somatic diseases are unwilled and without blame, for such are an immovable element of mankind’s postlapsarian nature.

Psychological diseases, however, are a product not of nature but of demonic temptation (and thus also the will). “Illness of the immortal soul,” Sophronius continues in Miracles 14, “is against nature, and is a kind of alteration of its nature, which is incorruptible by the grace of God its creator, and a disease similar to corruption, born in the abuse of demons and instituted by their hatred against us.”¹³⁰ As the fallen nature of mankind retains the free will to resist such evil, however, willing submission makes us responsible and is therefore a sin.¹³¹ In Miracles 35 Sophronius claims that “The father of hatred among men and the teacher of hatred toward one’s brother [i.e., the Devil], he who from the beginning had deceived man and stripped him of whatever divine grace there was within him, is not satisfied with his own madness and anger toward men, and ceaselessly assaults them with a great number of disasters and misfortunes, as the divine Job says. But he continuously rouses them against each other, spreads among them the seeds of hatred toward one’s fellow man, and incenses them toward hatred of one another, so that they even choose him as an ally in their wrath, in the first place doing themselves a great harm (for the death of the soul is born from that consent) and thus also their brothers, whom we have been ordered to love as ourselves.”¹³² Sophronius’s distinction between somatic and psychological disease, therefore, captures the complex moral position of postlapsarian humankind.

Appreciated thus, Sophronius’s narratives take on a broader significance as Christian narratives of redemption. Indeed, the Miracles of Cyrus and John often presents the progression of its subjects from (voluntary or involuntary) sickness to health as parallel to the movement of humankind from (voluntary or involuntary) corruption to salvation. In Miracles 34, for example, Sophronius recalls the pilgrimage to Menuthis of one Dorothea and her two young sons, describing how the elder child fell sick after swallowing an egg: “When the author of evil [i.e., the Devil] saw them under a tree,” he tells us, “at once he remembered that ancient plan that he hatched against us under a tree, through which, in Adam and Eve, he killed the entire human race with his malign weapons, and through which it was commanded to slave under death. Hence he revealed to the boys a wind-egg of the serpent through which he had contrived our own destruction and showed it to the lads as it lay beside the tree trunk, which was neither good to eat, nor was it beautiful to look at, even if it appeared so to the boys, as it had to Eve, on account of the immaturity of their age, which had not obtained the trained eyes of the soul [gegumnasmena ta tēs psuchēs aisthētēria] in order to discriminate between good and evil.”¹³³ Here, then, the temptation and subsequent sickness of the child is an explicit recapitulation of the temptation and subsequent corruption of Adam and of Eve.¹³⁴

To those corrupted by the Fall, the saints bestow both health and the promise of future salvation. Thus, in Miracles 38, when a heretic patient informs his slave that he will rejoin his sect upon his return home, the saints punish him by renewing his former illness. “But the Christ-imitating saints,” we read, “in the excess of their love of man and desire that all men be saved [sōthēnai] and come to knowledge of the truth, showed the cause [of his illness] in a dream, so that he might come to recognition, and in recognition repent, and repentant be saved [sōtheiē].”¹³⁵ The soteriological analogy, therefore, is further enabled by the ambiguity of recurrent words in the Greek. The saints offer not only health (sōtēria) and release (lutrōsis) but salvation (sōtēria) and redemption (lutrōsis).¹³⁶

In curing the sick, therefore, the saints both inhabit and prefigure the redemptive role of Christ. In several instances their activities are an explicit recapitulation of cures performed by Christ within the Gospels. At the end of Miracles 5, for example, the patient whom the saints cure picks up his mat and runs into Alexandria, “imitating by this deed the sick man who lay in the sheep pool, whom Christ cured after thirty-eight years and ordered to pick up his mat [John 5:1–15].”¹³⁷ Again in Miracles 46, the saints dispatch a blind man to wash his face in the pool of Siloam at Jerusalem, in direct imitation of Jesus in the Gospel of John. “For these [saints],” says Sophronius, “are imitators of the Savior, and use his words, in their haste to demonstrate, through all their cures, whence they draw their grace.”¹³⁸ Cyrus and John, therefore, are “imitators of Christ” (Christomimētoi),¹³⁹ “bearers of Christ” (Christophoroi);¹⁴⁰ their involvement on earth is a sunkatabasis, “condescension.”¹⁴¹ Imitation, however, extends beyond the saints’ action to their metaphysical union, for in his Prologue Sophronius describes the posthumous pairing of the saints in the language of the (Chalcedonian) union of divine and human natures in the Incarnation.¹⁴²

In addition to replicating both the historical deeds of Christ and his divine-human union, the saints also prefigure his eventual judgment:¹⁴³

I remember saying in what preceded that I would write two or three tales through which the intensity and astringency of the saints would be made known, for the help of those who are rather indifferent, and for the benefit of those who are more steadfast, so that each might learn that [the saints] know how not only to reward the best but also to punish the worst. And in this they mimic Christ, their Master, who spreads out his kingdom to all but does not concede it entirely to all, but to those who heed it in his message and maintain both faith in what they do and his commands. But to those who are not such, he gives the sleepless worm, eternal hell, and external darkness. [Cf. Mark 9:43–48; Isaiah 66:24.] And to those on the right he says, “Come, receive your inheritance,” and to those on the left he shouts, “Go from me into the eternal fire.” [Cf. Matthew 25:35–41.] And through the prophet Isaiah he similarly said to all, “If you desire it and you hear me, you will eat the good things of the earth; if you do not desire it and you do not hear me, you will receive the sword. For the mouth of the omnipotent Lord told these things [Isaiah 1:19–20].” And let nobody reproach the saints as austere nor suspect them to be cruel or harsh when they follow in their master’s footsteps in doing good to the prudent and punishing the wicked.

In approaching the saints, therefore, the sick anticipate their appearance before Christ upon the Last Day. Indeed, in several places within the Miracles of Cyrus and John, the saints themselves emphasize that it is not they who decide who shall be healed or when, but rather Christ, their master.¹⁴⁴ Before both the saints and Christ, those with somatic diseases are without blame, for such diseases are a product of our natural (and blameless) corruption in the Fall. Indeed, such diseases might even be conceived as a boon—“virtues and heavenly praxeis (aretai gar ekeinai kai praxeis ouranoi),” as Sophronius states in Miracles 13.¹⁴⁵ Those with diseases of the soul, however, are sinners, for such diseases are products of the will. Thus Miracles 16: “We shall give an account and stand in judgment at the tribunal of Christ, whenever the Judge descends from heaven to distribute to each according to his deeds, but not according to diseases of the body. ‘For we all must stand at the tribunal of Christ, so that each may receive his rewards for what he did while in the body, whether good or bad’ [II Cor. 5:10].”¹⁴⁶

In order to appease both the saints and (by extension) Christ, supplicants must first demonstrate the virtue of their souls. For Cyrus and John, says Sophronius, “pay greater attention to the sinlessness [apatheia] of souls than the curing of bodies.”¹⁴⁷ As a basic precondition of the saints’ approval, therefore, patients must demonstrate a resolute faith (pistis) in God and the martyrs.¹⁴⁸ In Miracles 2, Sophronius thus relates the tale of one Theodore: “He also was from the same city of Alexandria but had a modest fortune, led a life free from anxiety [bios amerimnos], and best of all, enjoyed contentment with his lot [autarkeia].”¹⁴⁹ Theodore falls into an affliction of the eyes, and the doctors tell him it is incurable. And so “he went to the shrine of the martyrs, clothing himself in a single and unshakable hope, sincere faith in them and the vision that comes from them to those who believe in them thus. And so coming to the holy temple of the martyrs, he reaped the fruit of believing in them with his whole soul [tēs eis autous holopsuchou pisteōs]. For having spent the shortest time there, he obtained the fruit that had not been cultivated for a long time but tended in simplicity of faith.”¹⁵⁰

By contrast, other supplicants must undergo an extraordinary test of endurance in order to prove their commitment to the saints. In Miracles 69 a blind Roman patient comes to the saints, but makes “the unshakable resolution” not to enter their temple until he has first set aside his disease. “For he sat before the doors of the temple, and lay, ate, and slept there. He was burned in summer and froze in winter. He was soaked by violent rains and scorched by fierce rays, since he had the sun blazing over his head during the day and the deliverance of the moon during the night. And he had thus completed eight years in the open air and had not dishonored his own promise, nor even considered dishonoring it up until then, or to abandon it, even if he remained blind for the rest of his life. Hence those who knew him judged him worthy of praise for such constancy of thought and steadfast judgment; and the martyrs judged him worthy of a final cure.”¹⁵¹ Such asceticism is a demonstration of resistance to the demons that assault the soul.¹⁵² Thus in Miracles 13 a leper comes to the shrine in hope of a cure. “But when a not inconsiderable amount of time had passed and still he had gained no profit, he grew despondent. For the saints manage their cures with a certain economy. Evidently he was suffering from a diabolical mind that wanted to prevent his cure and to eradicate the sympathy of the saints, and he was no longer able to remain in the temple. For the disease of accidie [tēs akēdias to pathos] is serious and greatly opposed to souls that love God, able to do them great injury unless they quickly extinguish it as an illusion of the midday demon [hōs daimoniou phasma mesēmbrinou].”¹⁵³

Recalcitrant sinners are brought to obedience either through persuasion or through punishment.¹⁵⁴ Speaking of the obstinate heretic Theodore in Miracles 36, Sophronius describes how “When he had heard all these sworn pronouncements, he nevertheless remained disobedient and unchanged [apeithēs kai ametathetos]. The martyrs, therefore, since they were not able to persuade him using words, tried with the goads of illness.”¹⁵⁵ Those diseases that manifest on patients’ bodies (i.e., that occur as a form of divine paideia) are both punitive and positive. (Paideia itself means both “punishment” and “education.”)¹⁵⁶ “For the saints,” says Sophronius, “do this to help, as does the common teacher of all, so that those who undergo their punishments might be able to become conscious [of their sin] and thus demonstrate the proper repentance.”¹⁵⁷ In such cases, Cyrus and John “are sympathetic toward those who suffer and bestow their healings quickly upon them, unless they are unworthy of such things, or in need of a greater correction [paideia] through some irrationality and hidden sin that only the ruler of all knows, and those to whom he has imparted the knowledge because of their worthiness.”¹⁵⁸ But, Sophronius says in Miracles 17, the saints bestow healing “on all those who approach them without envy, turning nobody away from their gift, unless someone is particularly loathsome and unworthy of their goodwill, or through lack of faith has become unworthy, or obtained through evil deeds an incontrovertible will [boulēsis].”¹⁵⁹ Such instances occur twice within the narrative.¹⁶⁰ Elsewhere, the outward scars of a disease remain as an “edifying proof” of a patient’s reluctance to believe.¹⁶¹

The route both to the immediate approval of the saints and to future resurrection, therefore, is through adoption of the virtues and resistance to sin. Christ himself provides the paradigm for humankind to follow: “The Lord first revealed to us the road of justice and first discovered the way to complete withdrawal from the diseases of the soul [tribon tēs apo tōn psuchikōn pathōn teleias anachōrēseōs], saying to all in his mercy, ‘Learn from me’ [Matthew 11:29].”¹⁶² Being without sin, Christ’s will is in perfect accordance with that of God. Sophronius thus quotes Christ’s words within the Gospel of John, “‘I have food to eat that you do not know’ (by ‘food’ meaning the salvation and sweet redemption of those who believe in him). ‘For my food,’ he says, ‘exists so that I may do the will [thelēma] of the Father who sent me and complete his work’ [John 4:34].”¹⁶³ The will of mankind, however, while free, is subject to temptation and to sin, a product of our imperfect postlapsarian condition.¹⁶⁴

Within both the shrine and the broader Christian life, the Miracles emphasizes, eventual redemption is achieved through ascetic discipline: the faithful forbearance of natural corruption and constant resistance to the demons that assault the soul. The adoption of the “ascetic life [bios monēros],” Sophronius tells us in Miracles 65, “is for [the saints] a much-desired repayment from those they have cured,” and furthermore, “they receive such people with joy, and immediately release them in good health.”¹⁶⁵ The Miracles of Cyrus and John summons its audience to follow the example of Christ and the saints, to renew fallen humanity through obedience to divine will, withdrawal from sin (anachōrēsis), and the pursuit both of spiritual perfection (apatheia) and the life free from care (bios amerimnos).

In the preceding chapter we saw how the dominant late-antique strands of Christian ascetic theory (the vocabulary of which Sophronius repeats in the Miracles) were eucharistically minimalist: that is, that such theories subordinated divinization through the objective power of the eucharist to divinization through individual spiritual endeavor. While Sophronius recapitulates such emphases in presenting ascetical self-transformation as the principal route to success at the shrine (and thus also to salvation), he nevertheless preserves a prominent place for the objective effects of the eucharist. In order to be healed, pagan and heretic supplicants at Menuthis must not only cleanse themselves of sin but also illuminate their souls through communion. In Miracles 12 the saints repeatedly appear to the anti-Chalcedonian heretic Julian, “warning him to renounce that dogma and to embrace the communion of the catholic Church. And often they carried a goblet full of the holy body and blood of the Lord and ordered him to approach it, seemingly taking communion themselves and summoning Julian to commune with them.”¹⁶⁶ In Miracles 37 Sophronius describes how the blinded heretic John came to the saints’ shrine in search of a cure. “John was sleeping on a bed,” he tells us, “and as he slept he saw himself stood before the tomb of the saints, and he begged for the strength back in his eyes. And as he did this he seemed to see the saints seated before their own tomb in the form and shape of priests. They rose from their seats, and taking John’s hand led him to the divine altar. Standing him there, they offered him the bread that had become the holy and life-giving body of Christ. And after partaking of this, they took again from the mystical table a goblet full of divine milk, and gave it to him to drink. . . . After this they dismissed John and addressed him with these words: ‘See, young man, you have learned the way of true life. In future partake of Christ’s mysteries here.’ For John was of the same doctrine as Theodosius and Severus, and had obtained the rank of subdeacon in their sect.”¹⁶⁷ Waking up John then “immediately partook of the mysteries where he was commanded, setting aside all his previous doctrine and embracing the soul-aiding preaching of the Church. When he had done this as was ordained, on the third day he saw light with his eyes, which followed the immediate illumination of his soul [phōtismos tēs psuchēs].”¹⁶⁸

In the subsequent miracle, the saints once again demand that a heretic, Stephanus, partake in the orthodox eucharist. Cyrus appears in a dream and says to the patient, “Truly, brother, I want more than anything to hear you saying, as you approach the temple, ‘Amen, amen, Lord.’” Then Stephanus “knew that he was talking about partaking in the mysteries of Christ.” “For,” Sophronius interjects, “this is what we say in response to the priests when they distribute the life-giving and salvific body and blood of Christ God, bearing witness with our own voice and confessing that it is true and called true that it is given by them for our spiritual nourishment [trophē pneumatikē] and release from sins [aphesis hamartiōn].”¹⁶⁹ Stephanus partakes of the Chalcedonian eucharist and is cured of his blindness, yet the disease returns when the saints punish him for intending to revert to his former dogma. Then, “when the divine martyrs saw him sincerely promising and hurrying with all his might to honor his agreement with them concerning the faith, again they appeared to him in a dream, standing at the altar of Christ and offering bloodless sacrifice, which they brought and presented to him. And as he again partook of it they showed him the Church, Bride of the Savior, flashing in bright clothes, divinely ornamented and with an incomparable beauty that it is not possible to describe in human words. And coming forward to the august altar, she herself again took the mysteries of Christ that lay there and offered them to Stephen. And when the saints asked her if what was given sufficed for perfection [pros teleiōsin], she replied with these words: ‘I want him to abound in divine gifts, and to acquire more than what is given. For now I have received him as one who is enlightened, and from now on he shall be called my son.’ And having spoken thus to the martyrs, she hung from his neck a golden cross that shone with radiant precious stones about his chest, providing this as a proof of the illumination [phōtisma] that had been given to him.”¹⁷⁰ Sophronius refers to the event as an “initiation” (mustagōgia).¹⁷¹

Conversely, those pagans and heretics who approach the eucharist without abandoning sin are punished. In Miracles 31 Sophronius relates the tale of one Theodore, who “while in the temple of the saints, after partaking in the life-giving mysteries of Christ—and whence motivated I do not know: either with something urging him on to anger or inflamed by some great mania and burning with the movement of simmering blood around the heart—the wretched, sorry man insulted the Divine by blaspheming, not by simple words or by abusing him as if he were a fellow slave but by sucking up air through the nostrils and making a noise like some terrible thunder, which forced everyone who was present, who saw it, and who unwittingly heard it, straightaway to shudder.”¹⁷² Sophronius then comments: “Many Christians do this, [not] realizing that they are blaspheming, as I see it; for they are completely unaware of what they are doing. If they understood it properly, they would not do it after a myriad tortures. Perhaps it is not pointless to describe this evil. For perhaps when some learn its nature, and that it is an invention worthy of pagan impiety, they will protect themselves against such folly. Porphyry says that when the pagans offer their polluted sacrifices to idols, they sneeze violently and produce such a noise through a forceful, powerful inhalation of the breath, [thinking that they thus] compose a sacred hymn. . . . This, then, is the nature of such noises, which exist for the service of demons, and which force those who produce them imperceptibly to celebrate the impure demons.”¹⁷³ Returning to his tale, Sophronius thus relates how “Theodore used this loathsome and demon-pleasing noise after [taking] the food of immaculate communion, and immediately was deprived of his sight and blinded, finding a vengeance to accompany his blasphemy.”¹⁷⁴

The same emphasis upon ritual purity occurs most emphatically within the next miracle, which again concerns a pagan. The silver seller Agapius is convicted of idolatry in Constantinople but flees to Alexandria, “thinking that he could here lie low and be hidden.”¹⁷⁵ When he is then afflicted with paralysis (“the work of justice”), some people advise him to go to Saints Cyrus and John for a cure. Fearing lest in his unwillingness he be unveiled as a pagan (“for the wretched man was pretending to be a Christian”), Agapius acquiesces and travels to their shrine.¹⁷⁶ “Not long after,” says Sophronius, “who he was became known to the [other] patients, for as in the manner of heresy he refused to partake of the life-giving mysteries, and much murmuring against him arose among those in the temple. When he realized this, wanting to avert suspicion, he partook of the holy mysteries of Christ. And swiftly after his participation in them, a savage demon fell upon him, exactly as Satan attacked the traitorous Judas after he took the bread that the Savior gave, having dipped it. . . . Tortured by the demon and continuously under its spell, even while asleep, if indeed he did sleep, he was convicted of approaching the mysteries not with faith but with hypocrisy.”¹⁷⁷ Those around Agapius realize that the demon will soon kill him, and they remove him from the temple to travel to Alexandria to die. “But when he had left the saints’ temple, and traveled a short distance, he breathed his last in much pain, and thus obtained a death worthy of his impiety, for the demon choked him on the road.”¹⁷⁸

For Sophronius the eucharist is the central marker of membership within the Chalcedonian Church. It has, moreover, a powerful and emphatic spiritual effect: it provides “illumination of the soul,” “spiritual nourishment,” “release from sins.” There is, however, a central paradox, for although Sophronius of all miracle authors devotes most space to the eucharist, and although he regards eucharistic participation as the central medium through which the boundaries of the orthodox group are constructed, it is nevertheless notable that mention of the eucharist within the Miracles of Cyrus and John occurs only in those cases where the supplicant is a heretic or a pagan (Miracles 12, 31, 32, 36–39). Eucharistic communion thus provides an initial moment of spiritual enlightenment in a context of conversion, but in no other instances (where the orthodox credentials of a supplicant are assumed) is there any mention of participation in the shrine’s eucharistic rituals. For most subjects, therefore, the purification of the soul (and thus appeasement of the saints) is achieved not through communion with Christ in the eucharist but through communion with Christ in ascetic imitation.¹⁷⁹ Although the eucharist occupies a privileged position as a fundamental expression of orthodox belief, as a permanent mode of spiritual enlightenment (and thus also as a strategy for saintly appeasement) it here seems ineffective.¹⁸⁰

THE MIRACLES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The general restriction of the eucharist within the Miracles of Cyrus and John is symptomatic of a broader marginalization of clerical personnel and ecclesial context within Sophronius’s scheme. Enigmatic dreams, it should be noted, are exceptional, and only once do we glimpse a possible clerical arbitration of divine access through dream interpretation.¹⁸¹ Indeed, while certain of the shrine’s clerics are included as subjects of the saints’ miracles, such clerics are for the most part conspicuous for their absence from surrounding narratives. Furthermore, where ecclesiastical rituals do appear, it is in dreams, and the rites themselves are appropriated by the saints. In the face of recalcitrant pagans or heretics, therefore, it is not clerics but the martyrs who appear as priests with the cup of communion, spreading incense in the manner of the steward or reading from the Gospels in the form of a deacon.¹⁸² Furthermore, when such supplicants awake and partake of the eucharist, they do so directly, seemingly without clerical mediation.¹⁸³

In a text that celebrates the direct intercession of the saints within the lives of individuals, the absence of clerics and mediating rituals is perhaps unsurprising. Nevertheless, once we situate Sophronius’s text next to other healing-saint collections produced within the same period, his presentation of the saints’ cult’s practice appears not as a simple description of patients’ experience at the shrine but as a particular model promoted over potential others, and in competition with other potential impresarios. Several of such collections survive: thus at Seleucia we have the Miracles of Thecla (444–76);¹⁸⁴ at Constantinople, the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian (ca. 527–623)¹⁸⁵ and Miracles of Artemius (658–68);¹⁸⁶ and at Thessalonica, the Miracles of Demetrius (ca. 610).¹⁸⁷ Like Sophronius, these authors too insist on basic virtue as a precondition of their saint or saints’ patronage (although their schemes, we should note, are less developed). Besides the need for faith in the saint, emphasized within all collections, the Miracles of Thecla 4 makes explicit reference to the need for supplicants to adopt a “worthy life.” For, the text tells us, “the holy megalomartyr will never approach someone who is slovenly and impious.”¹⁸⁸ The Miracles of Cosmas and Damian too, like the Miracles of Cyrus and John, emphasizes the importance of obedience to, and faith in, the saints: “See now, most faithful ones,” interjects one author at the end of Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 16, “how many difficulties disobedience [hē parakoē] brings about, and what better, what greater benefits the virtue of obedience [hē tēs hupakoēs aretē] produces.”¹⁸⁹ The Miracles of Artemius, too, makes explicit reference to sin as an impediment to cure.¹⁹⁰

Alongside these demands for basic virtue, however, these collections also comment on the clerical and liturgical structures of their shrines. In the Miracles of Thecla clerics are celebrated as special recipients of the saint’s favor, and the cult itself is integrated within a far broader ecclesiastical world. Thus the text describes a remarkable succession of high-level clerics: Dexianus, bishop of Seleucia (3, 7, 8, 32), Menodorus, bishop of Aegae (9), Basil, bishop of Seleucia (12), Marianus, bishop of Tarsus (29), Maximus, bishop of Seleucia (30), John, bishop of Seleucia (44), and Porphyrius, bishop of Seleucia (peroration). “The archpriests and priests,” the author informs us in Miracles of Thecla 6, “are more honorable than all men.”¹⁹¹ Both Dexianus and Menodorus, furthermore, prior to election to their respective sees, are said to have been administrators (paredroi) within the saint’s shrine.¹⁹² The cult is presented, therefore, both as the playground of an ecclesiastical elite and as a training ground for local clerical honors.

Furthermore, where the Miracles of Cyrus and John makes little or no reference to liturgical contexts—that is, contexts that might require clerical intercession—the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian contains a general exhortation to participate in the eucharist, added, almost as an afterthought, to Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 5:¹⁹³

Therefore you learn, friends of Christ, what you knew—that is, the operations of the saints Cosmas and Damian, which most of us have enjoyed, lest we neglect to come together as far as we are able in their church, which benefits all. For those who are strong of body who fulfill this procure security for themselves, and those among them judged worthy of a cure by the saints who compete with them fulfill a debt and perform an act of gratitude, in particular whenever their hands look to the needs of those in want and they participate more frequently in divine communion—I mean the awesome mysteries. For those who live with these virtues not only serve God, who is well pleased with such sacrifices, but also found their own souls on rock, souls whose foundations the winds of life are not able to shake, for they have been founded on the secure rock of faith.

The same text sets two miracles at the saints’ regular vigil,¹⁹⁴ and furthermore, it contains one narrative that dramatically underscores the potential of liturgical acts to heal. Therein, a deaf and dumb woman comes to the shrine and implores the saints to intervene. “Before being healed,” the anonymous authors tell us, “she sang in her mind the Trisagion, and through and by this she was healed with the grace of Saints Cosmas and Damian. For when the lamplight service [to luchnikon] had finished in their home and the Trisagion was being pronounced as was the custom, suddenly she who was deaf heard the psalmody and who was mute cried out with the psalm singers, and sang with them the Trisagion.”¹⁹⁵ The Miracles of Thecla, too, contains a long and detailed description of the liturgical celebrations at the saint’s feast,¹⁹⁶ referring to the “spiritual benefit” (ōpheleia tēs psuchēs) that those celebrations bestow.¹⁹⁷

The later Miracles of Artemius presents an even more ritualized vision of a shrine’s practice (although the eucharist itself is, we should note, absent).¹⁹⁸ In Sophronius’s scheme, the sole acts that he prescribes to his audience (through inclusion in the narratives of most miracles) are the offering of prayers to the saints in preparation for a cure and the offering of thanks upon that cure’s completion.¹⁹⁹ But such acts in themselves confer no spiritual benefit (and are thus not prerequisite to success before the saints). In the Miracles of Artemius, however, many miracles refer to the performance of the “customary rites” (ta ethē) as a preparation for incubation itself, rites that seem to involve the simple dedication of a votive lamp (kandēlē) with wine and oil, or of a candle (kēros).²⁰⁰ Furthermore, the author offers a spirited defense of the efficacy of that practice when, in Miracles of Artemius 34, a sick girl who often lights lamps on behalf of her mother is saved from death by the saint. In a dream she sees angels coming to collect her, but Artemius objects and claims her for himself, thus saving her. The author then comments: “These things were revealed to the girl not because the martyr was opposed to the divine command (for this could not be) but in order that she might know that the Lord of Life had long since granted her to him, and lest she think that that the constant lighting [of lamps] be reckoned vain by the saints.”²⁰¹

The ritualized context that the Miracles of Artemius constructs is maintained further through frequent references to the shrine’s weekend vigil. Miracles of Artemius 33, for example, takes its setting as the time of the Sabbath, “with the Lord’s Day dawning and the spiritual vigil being celebrated, when the kathisma had been sung, after the three evening antiphons.”²⁰² The patient has a dream in which the saint commands him to apply a wax salve as a cure. When the patient wakes, “It was then the hour when the midnight rites [ta mesonuktika] are fulfilled, and the time when the holy wax salve is distributed with the adoration of the honorable and life-giving Cross.”²⁰³ The patient performs his adoration, receives the holy salve, and is cured.²⁰⁴

Artemius’s night vigil is indeed the defining act of worship for those devoted to his shrine. Thus the subject of Miracles of Artemius 15 is described as “a certain man in voluntary service, an attendant to one of the elite, who frequented the night vigil of the Forerunner on the Sabbath.”²⁰⁵ In Miracles of Artemius 18 the protagonist is “a certain man who attended the night vigil of the Forerunner from a young age, and who still now sings the verses of the sainted, humble Romanus.” In the same miracle, Theodosius “the church singer” (psaltēs) and Abraamius “the treasurer of the society of those who attend the night vigil” (arkarios tou philikou tōn tēs pannuchidos) also make appearances, as does one Theophylact, who also “frequented the night vigil.”²⁰⁶ In Miracles 36 the author recalls how a woman, Sophia, brought her herniated son to the shrine. “This child, Alexander,” we are told, “while he waited there to be cured, assisted ably at the time of the synaxis—that is to say, the holy martyr’s festival—hanging lamps and distributing water and [performing] other necessities.” When Artemius subsequently appears to the mother, he tells her, “I want nothing from you except this alone—if your son recovers, frequent the night vigil that is celebrated here.”²⁰⁷ When the boy is duly cured, Sophia gives to the church “as much as possible, and in accordance with the saint’s supervision she enrolled herself in the night vigil there.”²⁰⁸

The near-total absence from Sophronius’s narratives of liturgical context—or, at least, its sublimation into the realm of the saints—seems therefore quite remarkable. Where the Miracles of Artemius prescribes the performance of certain preparatory rituals (ta ethē) as an efficacious method of appeasing the saint, the Miracles of Cyrus and John demands only resolute faith and resistance to the passions. Furthermore, where the Miracles of Thecla, the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian, and (in particular) the Miracles of Artemius all emphasize the special healing power and spiritual benefit of liturgical contexts, in the Miracles of Cyrus and John such contexts are lacking (even if the presence of the patient at the shrine itself is an apparent necessity).²⁰⁹ Sophronius’s silence both on ritual acts and on ritual contexts should not, however, be interpreted as a comment on the absence of such things from the shrine itself, for the Miracles of Cyrus and John in fact hints at more ritualized regimes that conditioned the experiences of supplicants at the shrine.²¹⁰ Rather, that absence points to the author’s own ambiguous attitude toward such acts as an efficacious method of improving the soul and thus appeasing the saints. Indeed, Sophronius’s silence is all the more remarkable when we consider that his miracle narratives are informed by, and integrated within, a far broader theological scheme. He presents his narratives not as simple tales for the straightforward edification of his audience but rather as analogies for the entire Christian existence. In order to be healed (and thus also to be saved), the text emphasizes, one must strive to improve the soul, but that improvement is achieved not through participation in ritual (beyond the initial illumination offered to converts in the eucharist) but rather through the adoption of the virtues, resistance to the passions, and willing obedience to God (in imitation of Christ and his saints). In comparison with ascetic self-transformation, engagement with the external realities of the Church, as a continuous mode of spiritual enlightenment, here seems insignificant.

According to Leontius of Neapolis’s Life of John the Almsgiver, the patriarch at Easter used to deliver sermons in which, under inspiration from Sophronius, he railed against the participation of heretics in the Chalcedonian eucharist:²¹¹

[We have shown] how much of an immovable zealot was the hieromyst for the orthodox faith, and a great despiser, in particular, of the leaders of heresies. And just as the divinely inspired disciples did for Paul, thus the celebrated [John] put forward Sophronius as a warrior of doctrine and pious dogmas. Often he commanded and bore witness, especially in his festal letters to the people, the point that they should never, at any time, share or approach communion with those of a different faith [hē tōn heteropistōn koinōnia], or rather defilement [koinōsis]. . . . “How, [he proclaimed], when we have been joined to God through the orthodox and catholic church and faith . . . will we not have a share in the punishment that awaits the crowds of heretics in the world to come, if we defile the orthodox and holy faith and pervert it through communion with heretics [dia tēs koinōnias tōn hairetikōn]? . . . And so I entreat you, my children, do not touch upon such oratories: no, I beg, not for communion, nor for prayer, nor for sleeping [eis parakoimēsin].”

The tone of the sermon—which, as Déroche has suggested, may have come from the pen of Moschus and Sophronius themselves—of course resonates with a central theme of the Miracles of Cyrus and John: that is, the importance of eucharistic participation in constructing the boundaries between orthodox and heretic.²¹² Where other cultic authors comment on the eucharist in passing, Sophronius affords it a central place within his collection (conceptually and literally), pointing to the necessity of eucharistic communion as the central expression of adherence to Chalcedonian doctrine.²¹³ Therein he recapitulated, and perhaps responded to, the parallel emphasis developed within anti-Chalcedonian texts such as the Plerophoriae.

The importance of the eucharist to Sophronius’s vision must nevertheless be qualified. In constructing narratives that celebrated supernatural experiences of the saints, the authors of all miracle collections were aware of the centrifugal pull that unrestricted, unmediated supernatural access might exert.²¹⁴ While the celebration of the saints of itself precluded a pervasive emphasis on terrestrial mediation—thought not, it should be noted, in equivalent Western collections²¹⁵—those same authors nevertheless attempted to counteract that pull through the imposition of certain centralizing imperatives. In the Miracles of Thecla, the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian, and the Miracles of Artemius, as we have observed, that qualification is achieved through subtle emphases on clerical structures: in the Miracles of Thecla, continuous reference to the local clerical establishment and the special place accorded to the saint’s feast; and in the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian and Miracles of Artemius, intermittent references to ecclesial contexts and to the special favor that such contexts confer. Each of these authors thus constructed a particular model of proper cultic practice that contextualized the dream experience within the liturgical rhythms and hierarchical structures of the shrine itself.²¹⁶

In Sophronius’s Miracles, however, those same emphases are conspicuous for their absence. Sophronius’s text, we must remember, is the longest and most complex of all miracle collections,²¹⁷ imbued with an intricate soteriological metaphor through which the progression of its narratives parallels the movement of the Christian life through corruption to redemption. The remarkable absence of ecclesiastical structures from the Miracles of Cyrus and John, therefore, appears not as an accident of genre but rather as a deliberate exclusion, a comment on the ambiguous status of those structures within Sophronius’s comprehension of the spiritual life. Of all miracle authors, Sophronius is the most concerned to integrate the eucharist within his scheme: it provides an initial moment of spiritual enlightenment and is, furthermore, the quintessential expression of membership within the Chalcedonian Church. But despite its elevated status, the relevance of eucharistic communion as a permanent mode of spiritual progression is at best ambiguous. For Sophronius, the appeasement of Christ involves engagement not with the outward structures of the Church but rather with resistance to the passions and obedience to God in Christlike imitation. His theological vision in effect replicates the eucharistic minimalism that we have observed among the earliest ascetic generations.

In the end, therefore, Sophronius presents a Chalcedonian group defined less through mutual orientation around the orthodox eucharist and more through shared doctrine and ascetic endeavor. That endeavor nevertheless embraces all orthodox Christians, irrespective of social or geographical status, for Sophronius includes within his scheme Christians of all imaginable callings, from the highest to the lowest,²¹⁸ from the nearest to the farthest.²¹⁹ That inclusive emphasis is important, for it will appear again and again in the texts produced within his circle.²²⁰ Indeed, in subsequent decades it would come to complement a striking modification of that same circle’s attitudes to eucharistic participation, through which Moschus, Maximus, and indeed Sophronius would attempt further to close the conceptual gap between asceticism and eucharist, adding to Sophronius’s doctrinal emphasis an urgent imperative that all orthodox Chalcedonians, including monastics, partake of the unrivaled spiritual gifts conferred through regular communion.

In the course of time, Sophronius’s attitudes to heretics would also undergo a significant evolution. At the time of the text’s composition, we should recall, Sophronius is said to have been a prominent doctrinal disputant of the patriarch John, entrusted with engaging with local dissenters. (Thus we may read as somewhat autobiographical the striking scene in Miracles of Cyrus and John 12 in which the saints are said to “dispute over dogma” with the recalcitrant anti-Chalcedonian Julian.)²²¹ In the Miracles of Cyrus and John, there can be little doubt as to the author’s adherence to Chalcedonian doctrine or to the errors of the Theodosians, Severans, Julianists, Apollinarians, and Gaianites whom he critiques.²²² Nevertheless, it should also be noted that explicit reference to Chalcedon occurs in but one tale, and in comparison to some later texts—the Spiritual Meadow of his master John Moschus, for example, or his own sermons—his attitude to heretics appears as somewhat moderate.²²³ Indeed, at the end of that short but central sequence of vignettes that concerns the conversion of heretics, Sophronius even offers a remarkable defense of his failure to expand on the theme: “I want to recall even more miracles of those who have communicated upon the order of the martyrs and learned the true faith,” he informs his audience, “but I content myself with those that have been said, lest anyone think I write the saints’ miracles because of my faith [pisteōs heneka].”²²⁴ We thus encounter in the Miracles the same stance that Leontius of Neapolis, at least, attributes to Sophronius’s patron, John the Almsgiver: a firm adherence to Chalcedonian doctrine and to the protection of its rites from heretical pollution, but a simultaneous commitment to conversion through engaged dialogue. From a later perspective—when, as we shall see, Sophronius’s attitude both to heretics and to doctrinal dialogue becomes far more aggressive, and when the man himself becomes the emperor’s principal doctrinal antagonist—that stance here seems quite remarkable.

Both changes of attitude—that is, the move toward a more developed understanding of the spiritual benefits conferred through the eucharist and the simultaneous hardening of attitudes both to heretics and to doctrinal dialogue—proceeded hand in hand with the deepening crisis of the Eastern empire. Although the Miracles of Cyrus and John itself maintains a stubborn silence on the looming shadow of Khusrau’s invasion, as Sophronius set down his pen in Alexandria the Persian campaign from which he and Moschus had fled had entered a more ambitious phase. Perhaps taking advantage of Heraclius’s revolt against the emperor Phocas, in 610 Persian armies had crossed the Euphrates and invaded the provinces of the Mediterranean seaboard. One force passed from Armenia into Asia Minor and in 611 captured Caesarea in Cappadocia. To the south, a separate Persian force overran Antioch and surrounding cities and then extended operations southward to Phoenicia, where Damascus capitulated in 613. From there that same force seized control of Caesarea, the metropolis of Palestina Prima, and in 613 the emperor Heraclius suffered a significant defeat at Antioch, breaking the Roman resistance.²²⁵

The Persian capture and occupation of Jerusalem that followed that defeat were to send shock waves throughout the Christian world and force Sophronius and his associates to retreat to the Latin West. Here, alienated from the East and dependent upon Western aristocrats for patronage, those same associates began to explore an alternative model of the Christian Church, a model that made a far more advanced attempt to reconcile the clerical and monastic vocations and with them their competing eucharistic and ascetical theologies. In its immediate context, that model partook of a broader process of ideological realignment through which Chalcedonian Christians, much like their anti-Chalcedonian equivalents in the period before, attempted to comprehend a situation in which the coinherence of empire and Church had been destabilized. But as the crisis in the East deepened and assumed a doctrinal dimension, and as the alienation of Sophronius and his colleagues from Constantinople became more entrenched, so would that new vision come to be deployed for far more subversive ends. Sophronius, in the Miracles of Cyrus and John, writes during the calm before the storm. But Miracles 69 nevertheless portends an imminent future in which he would challenge the authority of the emperor, recognize the preeminence of Rome, and question the ideal of a Christian empire:²²⁶

This man [John] was a Roman, not born in a city that is subject to the tribute of the Romans but having Rome itself, which rules first among them, as his fatherland and city. For truly Rome desired that this be added to its own glory—that is, to take pride in the miracles of Cyrus and John as things that are the more sacred, knowing these things to be brighter by far than crowns and scepters and the purple. For such things have their origin on earth, and are once more dissolved into earth.

1. For his Cilician origins see John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 171 [PG 87:3, 3037C], which says of one Zoilus that “we shared the same upbringing.” The F manuscript adds to his name ho Aigeotēs, thus confirming Moschus’s own origins; see Chadwick (1974) 56; Pattenden (1975) 41 n. 1; Maisano (1982) 247. See also the references to Cilician monasteries at John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 27–29, 31–32, 51, 57–58, 81–87, 90, 100; and to Cilician ascetics ibid. 3, 22, 41, 59, 61, 115, 123, 166, 182–83.

2. See Prologue to the Spiritual Meadow [Usener 91]; and the references to Theodosius’s higoumen as “our father” at 92–94. For the authorship of the Prologue to the Spiritual Meadow see below pp. 106–8.

3. See John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 40 [PG 87:3, 2893D], Emeina gar en autēi etē deka; with the chronological reconstruction of Schönborn (1972) 63f.; Chadwick (1974) 55f. For tales involving this community and its members see John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 41–42, 45, 62–67, 139–40.

4. For Sophronius as Moschus’s disciple see Sophronius, Miracles 70.8; Prologue to the Spiritual Meadow [Usener 92]. Moschus himself refers to Sophronius with various terms of respect (“‘lord,” “brother,” “son,” “companion,” “sophist”); see John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow preface, 69, 77, 92, 102, 110–11, 113, 135, 157, 162; Clugnet (1905) 51–54 no. 8. For speculation as to their meeting see, e.g., Chadwick (1974) 59, suggesting the aristocratic pilgrim Sophronius may have selected Moschus as a spiritual guide in Palestine. For Sophronius’s origins in Damascus see his own comments at Miracles 70.4 and in the Epigrams 1 [PG 87:3, 3421C–D]. For their relationship see Chadwick (1974) 59; also the recent observations of Krueger (2011) esp. 28–38.

5. For the Egyptian visit see John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 78; also Nissen (1938) 354–56 no. 1; and Prologue to the Spiritual Meadow [Usener 92], stating that Moschus had been sent “on service” (eis diakonian); cf. the Synaxarium of Constantinople (cited in Schönborn [1972] 57), stating that Sophronius went for the purposes of paideia. For Sophronius’s intention to become a monk at this stage see John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 110, also 69; and for his initiation ibid. 102, with the interpretation of Chadwick (1974) 57. For Sophronius as a monk of Theodosius see Sophronius, Miracles 70.4 and Epigrams 1 [PG 87:3, 3421C-D]. The contention of Chadwick (1974) 59 that “Sophronius’s decision to renounce the world was taken in consequence of his cure at Menouthis” places it too late. Cf. Schönborn (1972) 65f., and John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 92, 102, 111, 135, preceding the pair’s departure from the East and referring to Sophronius with the monastic titles “Abba” and “Brother.”

6. See John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 67 [PG 87:3, 2917C]: Emeina gar en autēi etē deka. For further tales associated with this laura John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 45, 62–68. For its location on Sinai see ibid. 134 [PG 87:3, 2997C], where Patriarch John of Jerusalem (575–93) is said to be constructing a nearby reservoir eis to Sina. Binns (1994) 50, however, locates the laura in Judaea, for the Latin of the PG gives in Sigma, so that he reads “in [the shape of] Sigma,” thinking that “the semi-circular shape of a sigma, as it was then written, would have become the distinguishing feature of a new reservoir.” (The F manuscript on which the PG Latin is based also gives Sigma; see Maisano [1982] 246.) The reason for referring to its shape, however, is still unclear, and Binns is incorrect that Sinai was nevertheless “far outside” the jurisdiction of Jerusalem’s patriarch. It is perhaps preferable, therefore, to follow the reading in the PG, with Chadwick (1974) 57, and to locate Moschus on Sinai in this period, where numerous tales of the Spiritual Meadow are situated, and where he himself later wished to be buried; see John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 122–27; Prologue to the Spiritual Meadow [Usener 92].

7. Prologue to the Spiritual Meadow [Usener 91].

8. Ibid. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 70.4 [Marcos 395], in which Sophronius says that he came to Alexandria “for a reason which it is not necessary to recall in writing.” For Moschus’s presence in Antioch see John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 39, 88–89. It is probable that before departing for Alexandria the pair visited Seleucia and Cilicia, where two tales in the Spiritual Meadow place them; see John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 79–80.

9. Sophronius, Miracles 70.4 [Marcos 395].

10. For the disease (epichusis or platukoria) see Sophronius’s words at Prologue to the Miracles 9 and Miracles 70.1–7.

11. See Sophronius, Miracles 70.8–2. At ibid. 70.8 [Marcos 396] Saint Cyrus appears to Sophronius “in the divine habit of a monk and in the same form as John [Moschus], the patient’s spiritual father and teacher, who was with him at the martyrs’ tomb and praying for his disciple and child.” Moschus appears again at Sophronius, Miracles 70.13. For this particular miracle, which includes Sophronius’s renunciation of Homer, see now Agosti (2011).

12. For the text as a memorial see Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 1. For the text as the payment of a debt owed to the saints see ibid. 8 and Miracles 70.2.

13. Sophronius tells us that the text was composed during the patriarchate of John the Almsgiver (610–20); see Miracles 8.2, 11.6. It was written while Sophronius was still in the city (see, e.g., Miracles 32.2, which refers to Alexandria as “here”), and so the date of the text depends on the date of his withdrawal; see below p. 101. Because of the absence of references to the Persian sack of Jerusalem—esp. ibid. 65.5—it is tempting to place it in the earlier half of the decade. For the Greek text I have used the critical edition of Marcos (1975), with the majority of the textual corrections suggested by Duffy (1984b) and (1987), and by the excellent commentary of Gascou (2006), with French translation. For the Prologue attached to Sophronius’s Miracles I have used the text of Bringel (2008).

14. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 6 [Bringel 7]. On the opposition between an “intense” (suntonos) and “relaxed” (aneimenos) style here see Milazzo (1992).

15. For Sophronius’s explanation of this division see Prologue to the Miracles 6 and the moments of transition at Miracles 1.1, 35.13, 36.1, 50.7, 51.1. For the biblical and mystical significance of the numbers 7, 10, and 70 see Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 4–5.

16. For detailed typologies of the various diseases and remedies within the text see Marcos (1975) 87–146.

17. For the archaeology of the site (wrongly identified as Canopus) see Goddio (2007) 29–68, with the correction of Stolz (2008). For the early Byzantine jewelry and coins from the site see Goddio and Clauss (2006) 259ff. (with discussion by Stolz) and Petrina [née Stolz] (2012). As Stolz (2008) 204 points out, the description of the site given in Goddio (2007) 29–31 is strikingly consistent with that in Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 29. For a description of the shrine as based on Sophronius, Miracles cf. Marcos (1975) 42–49; Montserrat (1998) 268–70.

18. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 18. For the relation of the anonymous Lives to Sophronius’s Prologue to the Miracles see Gascou (2007) 246–51.

19. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 23–29. In antiquity Menuthis was famed for a cult of Isis, although Sophronius calls the resident pagan goddess “Menuthis”; see ibid. 24 [Bringel 26].

20. See PG 77, 1100–1105.

21. See esp. Duchesne (1910); Wipszycka (1988). On the relation of the Cyrillian orations and the Life of Severus see also Sansterre (1991) 71–74; Alan Cameron (2007) 23–28.

22. Gascou (2007); Alan Cameron (2007) 23. Cf. Montserrat (1998) 261–66, who attempts to reconcile the two traditions by arguing that the cult was disused under Cyril’s successor and rival Dioscurus and later revived in opposition to a resurgent paganism at Menuthis.

23. Gascou (2007) 276ff.

24. Ibid. 266–68, 273–75. For these rival centers see also Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 23 [Festugière 374]. Variant traditions concerning a saint’s (or saints’) origins are not uncommon; see Esbroeck, (1981) on Cosmas and Damian; Davis (2001) 41–47 on Thecla.

25. See also Montserrat (1998) 276–78.

26. Pace Maraval (1981) 394 n. 8.

27. The main sources for the invasion to this point are Ps.-Sebēos, History 31–33; Theophanes, Chronicle A.M. 6096–98; Agapius, Universal History [Vasiliev 448f.]; Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 10.25; Anonymous Chronicle to 1234 86–87; Anonymous Chronicle to 724 [Brooks 145f.]; Chronicle of Seert 79; Khuzistan Chronicle [Guidi 20f.]; Jacob of Edessa, Chronicle [Brooks 324f.]. For discussion of the sources and chronology of the initial Persian advances, beginning from 603, see Flusin (1992b) vol. 2, 67–83; Howard-Johnston (1999b) 197–202; less critical is Stratos (1968–78) vol. 1, 58–66.

28. Sophronius, Anacreontics 21 (full title “On the Grandfather Menas, Steward of the Ennaton at Alexandria, Wrongly Accused under Phocas of Having Received Theodosius the Son of Maurice” [Gigante 128]) appears to place him in Alexandria during the reign of Phocas, for in addition to its subject it also contains a rare positive description of the emperor at ll. 99–103 [Gigante 132]. Cf. also the fleeting reference to the pro-Phocan Alexandrian patriarch Theodore at Sophronius, Miracles 8.2.

29. See the apparently widespread but no doubt apocryphal tale that whoever of the pair made it first to the capital would be crowned emperor: e.g., in Theophanes, Chronicle A.M. 6101; Agapius, Universal History [Vasiliev 449f.]; Michel the Syrian, Chronicle 10.25; Anonymous Chronicle to 1234 90; Nicephorus, Short History 1; Anonymous Chronicle to 741 6; Anonymous Chronicle to 754 1.

30. See John of Nikiu, Chronicle 107–9. For Bonosus and the events surrounding the coup in more detail, see Booth (2011b).

31. So Paschal Chronicle [Dindorf 699]: “And in this year Africa and Alexandria revolted. And the patriarch of Alexandria was killed by enemies.” John of Nikiu, Chronicle 107 records that Theodore, whose patriarchate Theophanes places 606/7–608/9, was an imperial appointment. For a parallel situation in Jerusalem see Paschal Chronicle [Dindorf 699]; Strategius, On the Fall 4.

32. Anonymous Life of John the Almsgiver 4 [Delehaye 20f.].

33. Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 1 [Festugière 347], repeating in the same chapter that John “was enthroned by divine command” [Festugière 348]. For comment see Borkowski (1981) 54f.; Déroche (1995) 137f.

34. For Heraclius’s route via the islands see John of Nikiu, Chronicle 109. During the Heraclian revolt coinage bearing the Heraclii was issued on Cyprus; see Grierson (1950). For a suggested sojourn on Cyprus see Olster (1993b) 127; Borkowski (1981) 37f.; but cf. Kaegi (2003) 48. Borkowski (1981) 40 and Rapp (2004) 130 suggest that the aristocrat John may have offered financial support to Heraclius during his rebellion. For Heraclius’s connection to Cyprus see also the famous inscription dated to 631 in Sodini (1998).

35. Anonymous Life of John the Almsgiver 4 [Delehaye 20f.]; Epitome of the Life of John the Almsgiver [Lappa-Zizicas 274], with Rapp (2004) 127–29.

36. See Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 10 [Festugière 357], with further indications of codependence in Rapp (2004) 128 with nn. 31, 32.

37. Rapp (2004) 132f. For Heraclius Constantine’s baptism, with the explicit presence of Nicetas, see Nicephorus, Short History [Mango 64].

38. Anonymous Life of John the Almsgiver 5 [Delehaye 21]; the version at Epitome of the Life of John the Almsgiver 5 [Lappa-Zizicas 275] has minor differences, including “six or seven” rather than simply “seven.”

39. See Déroche (1995) 138. As Déroche points out, that same uncritical acceptance of the theopaschite Trisagion would earn John’s Chalcedonian contemporary Arcadius of Cyprus the rebuke of Sophronius; see below p. 221.

40. Anonymous Life of John the Almsgiver 5 [Delehaye 21]; the version at Epitome of the Life of John the Almsgiver 5 [Lappa-Zizicas 275], interestingly, has “five synods.” For the same use of “four synods” (a common usage, which does not imply rejection of the fifth council) cf., e.g., John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 40; Gregory the Great, Letters 6.65. For discussion of John’s doctrinal and liturgical activities see Déroche (1995) 137–42.

41. See Maspero (1923) 328, citing an Arab translation of Leontius of Neapolis’s Life of John the Almsgiver (perhaps via Coptic) and the patriarch’s presence in Jacobite calendars. See also the two anti-Chalcedonian unions achieved in Egypt under John’s patriarchate, referred to together in the Anonymous Chronicle to 724 [Brooks 146] and analyzed below pp. 104–5.

42. See Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver, prologue, including “The others who have already before me spoken about this wondrous man and archbishop John wrote in an extremely fine and lofty manner [kallista te kai hupsēlotata], since they were truly capable in deed—I mean of course John and Sophronius, who feared God, loved virtue, and were truly champions of piety” [Festugière 343]. Leontius’s Life of John the Almsgiver can be dated through the reference ibid. 5 to the death of Constantine III (April 641) and its apparent commissioning by the archbishop Arcadius of Cyprus (died ca. 642); see below p. 261 n. 138.

43. Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 33 [Festugière 383]. Cf. also ibid. 5 [Festugière 349f.], where Sophronius offers spiritual comfort to the patriarch, with the presence of Moschus indicated in the statement that Sophronius acts keleustheis hupo tou epistatountos and with the additional, parenthetical explanation that “both happened to be there, nobly struggling against the demonic and heretical mania of the godless Acephali”; and ibid. 16 [Festugière 364], in which, “because of the innumerable heretics who lived in the county” (“Theodosians, Gaianites, Barsanuphites, and other impious heretics”) John “appointed those aforementioned men of eternal memory—that is, John and Sophronius, favored with the grace of God and illuminated through the divine wisdom of the blessed new Noah, Modestus, who occupied the seat of the city of Christ, who had not acquired a unique ark but who restored all the holy arks of God.” On John and his relationship to Moschus and Sophronius see further Usener (1907) 80–107; Chadwick (1974) 49–59; Rapp (2004). On Leontius of Neapolis and his hagiographies see Mango (1984); Déroche (1995); Krueger (1996). Though not considered here, it should be noted that John the Almsgiver is the author of a much-neglected Life of Tychon; see Usener (1907).

44. Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 37 [Festugière 386f.]. It is tempting to suppose that such disputations occurred at the Ennaton, which appears in Anonymous Life of John the Almsgiver 9, Epitome of the Life of John the Almsgiver 9, Sophronius, Anacreontics 21, and in John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 145–46 (with Maisano [1982] 246 for the former), 171, 177, and the additional tale at Paulus Evergetinus, Synagōgē 850f. These authors all present the Ennaton as Chalcedonian, but for the presence there of anti-Chalcedonians (both Syrian and Egyptian) in the precise same period see, e.g., History of the Patriarchs [Evetts 473–84]; and Hatch (1937) and Baars (1968) 1 on the biblical translations completed there by the Syrian scholars Thomas of Heraclea and Paul of Tella ca. 615–17. For the existence of disputations between Chalcedonians and anti-Chalcedonians in Egypt in this period cf. also Anastasius of Sinai, Hodegos 1.1 [Uthemann 9].

45. See below n. 223.

46. For this shrine see Grossmann (1998). For the rivalries between different local cults (or different shrines of the same saints) see, e.g., Egyptian Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 18; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 12; Miracles of Thecla 4, 29. On the latter Davis (2001) 78f. This competition is also expressed in claims to the precise same miracles; see, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 30.13, and cf. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 2 and 24 and Delehaye (1925) 48f. (here attributed to Menas). On the potential competition between different saints in the same shrine see also Nesbitt (1997) 13f.; Davis (2001) 133–36.

47. On the rivalry between Menuthis and Mareotis see Sophronius, Miracles 46.1, 51.7.

48. For this phenomenon elsewhere see, e.g., Miracles of Thecla 10, 14; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 17; Ecclesiastical Canons 3–4; with Booth (2011a). For pagan supplicants see Miracles of Thecla 11, 40, with Dagron (1978) 80–94; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 9. Cf. Egyptian Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 23.

49. Sophronius, Miracles 36.15 [Marcos 325].

50. Sophronius, Miracles 38.6 [Marcos 334]. For a similar tale cf. Sophronius, Miracles 37, with Maraval (1981) 388f.

51. See, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 8.15 [Marcos 256]: “Let us now do the same things as he, and sharing with him the singing of hymns to [the saints], let us move our account on to the miracles that were similarly performed upon his wife by the martyrs.” On these formulaic endings see Krueger (2004) 64–70.

52. For a multiplicity of cultic authorities both official and unofficial within a single shrine see esp. Miracles of Thecla 41, and the (often derogatory) references to other contemporary rhetors ibid. 19, 21, 30, 38–40.

53. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 7 [Bringel 8].

54. For Christodorus’s status as a cleric see his performance of liturgical functions at Sophronius, Miracles 31.4, 32.7. Although he is never called presbuteros, see the descriptions of his predecessor George at Sophronius, Miracles 51.11–12, described also as “leader of their congregation” (51.6: hēgoumenon tēs autōn homēgureōs), who “for some time miraculously presided over the temple” (ibid.: chronon tina tou naou thaumastōs hēgēsamenos). See also ibid. 51.10: “For [the saints] raised him in their temple like ancient Samuel, and made him virtuous, and promoted him bit by bit in the clergy, when he was of the appropriate age for each stage. And when he was able to manage it, they judged him worthy of their administration.” Pace Marcos (1975) 49, 52; Gascou (2006) 178 n. 1063. The steward appears in Sophronius, Miracles 8, 9, 10, 32, 35, 39, 40, 67, and his secretary ibid. 39.10. They no doubt controlled the treasury (gazophulakion) referred to ibid. 40.6. Two deacons are mentioned within the text: a John (ibid. 11.2) and a Julian (ibid. 36.13, 36.19, 36.23). It is unclear, however, whether these two were exact contemporaries. Ibid. 67 refers, more ambiguously, to hoi tōi neōi diakonoumenoi (67.4), hoi tēn hupēresian tou temenous poioumenoi (67.5), and hoi tēn leitourgian tōn hagiōn poioumenoi (67.7). It appears that clerical members of the saints’ staff are implied. These were aided by janitors (67.5, 67.7) and philoponoi (5, 35.6, 56.2); see Wipszycka (1970).

55. Sophronius, Miracles 8.1 [Marcos 253]. Cf. also Sophronius, Miracles 9 and 10, which concern Christodorus’s wife and daughter, respectively.

56. See ibid. 39.10.

57. Ibid. 31.7 [Marcos 308].

58. Sophronius, Miracles 32.8 [Marcos 311].

59. Cf. the author of the Miracles of Thecla, a priest who was twice excommunicated by the local bishop and turned to abuse; see Miracles of Thecla 12 (against the bishop Basil), peroration (against the bishop Porphyrius). The author, therefore, is a controversial figure on the margins of the saint’s official cult, in which context the Miracles of Thecla also circulated and was performed. See also Krueger (2004) 79–93.

60. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 31 [Bringel 34]. Cf. Miracles of Thecla 44.

61. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 31 [Bringel 34].

62. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 33 [Bringel 36].

63. For similar statements of the methodology see Miracles of Thecla prologue, 44; John of Thessalonica, Μiracles of Demetrius prologue, 3; Miracles of Artemius prologue.

64. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 3 [Bringel 3–4]. For the cooperation of the saints cf. Sophronius, Miracles 8.1; also Miracles of Thecla 31; Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Euthymius 60 [Schwartz 83], with the analysis of Krueger (2004) 77–78.

65. Sophronius, Miracles 20.1 [Marcos 280]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 18.4. 32.11–12.

66. Sophronius indeed hints at other miracle writers ibid. 35.1. An alternative Alexandrian collection of the Miracles of Cyrus and John does indeed survive within an unpublished manuscript at Athos (BHG 479i). The first miracle is situated in Heraclius’s twenty-fourth year, between October 634 and October 635, although the collection itself is later; see Gascou (2007) 247. It is tempting to speculate that the composition of a new group of the saints’ miracles represents an attempt to dethrone Sophronius as the preeminent impresario of the saints’ cult, in particular if the author was a devotee of Cyrus of Alexandria, whom Sophronius confronted in the summer of 633; see below p 209. The collection is now the subject of a much-anticipated study by Vincent Déroche. The existence of various (nonextant) literatures is well attested for other cults; see, e.g., the alternative miracles or encomia of Cosmas and Damian described at Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 26; Egyptian Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 10; Lucius (1904) 258 n. 4 (for the Suda’s witness to a collection by one Christodorus of Thebes); or Basil of Seleucia’s Acts of Thecla, described in Photius, Bibliotheca 168 [Henry vol. 2, 161].

67. Pace Maraval (1981) 394 n. 8.

68. On this “pedagogic function” see also Maraval (1981).

69. See Miracles of Artemius 8, in which a patient at the shrine chatters incessantly and keeps all the other supplicants awake; the saint then appears and threatens to double his disease if he does not leave.

70. See, e.g., Amundsen (1982); Miller (1985) 53–61; Larchet (1991); Temkin (1991). For this integrative tradition see also, on hospitals and monasticism, Miller (1985) 50–67, Crislip (2005); on holy men and medicine Horden (1982) and (1985), Harvey (1984). In the seventh century it is best represented by Anastasius of Sinai’s Questions and Answers, in which, for example, a doctor heals a number of patients at a shrine of Epiphanius (ibid. 96). On Anastasius and medicine see Déroche (1993) 105f.; Haldon (1992) 137–39.

71. Schönborn (1972) 225.

72. See, e.g., the incurable diseases at Miracles of Thecla 11, 24, 25, 38; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 21, 22. In these collections the doctors and the saints can be seen even to collaborate; see Miracles of Thecla 11, 24; and esp. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 19a, a wonderful description of a surgeon in action (under impulsion from the saints). Cf., however, the references to the simple remedies supplied by the saint (or saints), perhaps implying that doctors provide the opposite, at Miracles of Thecla 8, 18, 23; also Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 23. On the status of medicine within these texts see Dagron (1978) 107f.; Johnson (2006) 147ff.; Csepregi (2002) 107–12.

73. See Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 9 and Miracles 70.7.

74. Ibid. 1.11 [Marcos 246].

75. Sophronius, Miracles 32.4 [Marcos 309].

76. Sophronius, Miracles 69.5 [Marcos 392]. For similar statements see also Sophronius, Miracles 6.2, 24.3, 28.6, 29.10, 40.4.

77. An epithet primarily associated with Cosmas and Damian but used at Sophronius, Miracles 21.5 [Marcos 283].

78. Sophronius, Miracles 19.2 [Marcos 279].

79. Sophronius, Miracles 23.1 [Marcos 285]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 5.1, 12.5, 30.5.

80. Sophronius, Miracles 13.2 [Marcos 270].

81. Sophronius, Miracles 19.2 [Marcos 279].

82. See Sophronius, Miracles 17.3; 22.2; 30.6; 54.6.

83. Ibid. 15.1 [Marcos 272f.].

84. Sophronius, Miracles 58.1 [Marcos 373].

85. Sophronius, Miracles 64.3 [Marcos 383]. Cf. also Sophronius, Miracles 21.1, 23.1, 65.2.

86. Sophronius, Miracles 20.2 [Marcos 281].

87. Sophronius, Miracles 55.1 [Marcos 370]. Sophronius often acknowledges a hierarchy of medical ability; see Sophronius, Miracles 8.9, 9.2, 11.1, 21.3, 25.3, 28.6, 30.2, 32.12, 48.2, 54.5, 60.2, 70.4.

88. For instances of magic see Sophronius, Miracles 12, 21, 27, 35, 55, 63, 68. For demonic diseases, both through possession and assault, see ibid. 3, 9, 14, 26, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 44, 49, 54, 56, 57, 63, 65, 67. In certain cases magic and the demonic are equated; see ibid. 35.12, 63.1.

89. Ibid. 16.1–2 [Marcos 274f.]. On this passage see also Maraval (1981) 391.

90. For an informative contrast to this position see the words of Sophronius’s disciple Maximus Confessor in the Dispute at Bizya 3 [Allen and Neil 78]; also Maximus Confessor, Centuries on Love 1.64.

91. Sophronius, Miracles 1.6 [Marcos 244]. For a similar tale of a dissolute youth cf. Sophronius, Miracles 12.2–3 (drawing on the metaphor of the chariot in Plato’s Phaedrus 246a–254e).

92. See Sophronius, Miracles 1.7–8.

93. Thus in the same miracle, ibid. 1.10 [Marcos 245], Sophronius tells us that Ammonius “forgot his previous correction [paideia] and was corrected [paideuetai] again with an illness of the body.” For the punishment of skeptics, pagans, and astrologers with illness cf. Sophronius, Miracles 28.6, 29.9–10, 30.5, 32.4; with Maraval (1981) 384–86, Dagron (1992) 60f. In most instances heresy seems not to produce disease but rather to prevent cure; see, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 12.6 [Marcos 266], in which a patient’s dogma “stands in the way of the provision of a complete health.” Where heretics prove intransigent, however, or revert back to their previous dogma, the martyrs either intensify their disease or inflict a new one. For the former see Sophronius, Miracles 12.8; 39.5; for the latter see ibid. 37.7, 38.7–9, 39.10.

94. Sophronius, Miracles 63.3 [Marcos 381].

95. Sophronius, Miracles 43.3 [Marcos 347]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 22.3 [Marcos 284]: “If the blessed martyrs heal from God, then terrestrial doctors heal from man and from the earth.” For the saints as healers of both bodies and souls cf. Miracles of Thecla 18; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 2, 6, 9, 11, 23, 25; Miracles of Artemius 7.

96. For statements of the saints’ superiority see, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 18.3, 41.6.

97. For the various diseases within the text, with equivalent references in Dioscorides, Galen, Aetius of Amida, Alexander of Tralles, Paul of Aegina, and other medical authors, see Marcos (1975) 108–11. For such phrases as “the Asclepiadae call this . . .” see, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 1.3, 15.2, 20.2, 22.1–2, 32.4, 36.4. For the use of Hippocratic terminology and theory (esp. with reference to the humors) see, e.g., ibid. 4.2, 5.1, 8.6, 9.9–10. Sophronius often presents both doctors and patients employing humoral theory; see ibid. 18.3, 35.4, 54.5, 70.5.

98. John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 77 [PG 87:3, 2929D]. For the translation of hina praxōmen as “in order to study” see Schönborn (1972) 58f. For the textual variation see Maisano (1982) 243; and below p. 91 n. 5.

99. Wolska-Conus (1989) 47–59. For Stephanus see also PLRE vol. 3; Temkin (1991) 228–30.

100. Wolska-Conus (1989) 59. It is of interest to note the appearance of a Sophronius among Stephanus’s intellectual circle in another text, the astrological Apotelesmatikē pragmateia attributed to Stephanus himself; see Papathanassiou (2006) esp. 196–98, identifying the text’s Sophronius with Sophronius of Jerusalem (and thus placing him with Stephanus in Constantinople in September 621).

101. See, e.g., Horden (1982) 9f.; Duffy (1984a) 24f.; Miller (1985) 64; Haldon (1997) 44.

102. For the critique of astrological predestination see Sophronius, Miracles 28.2–5; see also Maraval (1981) 389f.

103. See esp. Sophronius, Miracles 67.10–11 [Marcos 389], in which the saints round upon a janitor who has admitted a “quack” (iatriskos) to their shrine in an attempt to save a suicide.

104. For the saints’ shrine as iatreion: Miracles of Thecla 25; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 9, 10, 12, 22. For Cosmas and Damian acting as doctors on their rounds, or performing surgeries, see ibid. 1, 17, 23. For the principle of superiority through assimilation see the discussion of Davis (2001) 76–77. Cf. Déroche (1993) 103 n. 22.

105. “Doctors”: Sophronius, Miracles 1.5, 4.3, 7.1, 8.5, 10.6, 23.1, 50.6, 52.2; iatreion: ibid. 10.6, 17.3, 42.4, 67.10. See also ibid. 33.8 (“in the form of doctors,” as master and apprentice), 62.4 (like doctors on their rounds). On assimilation to doctors cf. also Montserrat (2005) 238–40; Déroche (2000) 155–60. The latter argues that the authors of miracle collections, even though in competition with secular medicine, were forced to assimilate it to some degree, not only for the reassurance of patients and persuasion of the medically minded but also because such authors could not stretch the limits of what the public would accept.

106. Oil: Sophronius, Miracles 1, 3, 7, 22, 50, 65; direct intervention in a dream: ibid. 11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 33, 53.

107. See ibid. 4.4 (citron fruit), 5.4 (dried fig), 8.14 (cooked peas), 10.7 (honey), 13.6 (camel dung mixed with water), 17.4 (salted cumin), 51.8 (Bithynian cheese), 53.2 (roasted pepper), 59.4 (raw leeks). The same is true of more exotic products: powdered crocodile meat (24.5), for example, or an unguent of salted quail (43.4). Such remedies (powders, unguents) are furthermore prescribed in technical language that reeks of the lexicon of secular medicine; see the cure ibid. 6.3 [Marcos 252], said to be a “compound [sunthēma] made from parsnip and honey and mixed through rubbing [dia tripseōs] with a bread to become from both a single plaster [kataplasma].” On the closeness of Sophronius’s cures to both contemporary technical and popular medicine cf. Marcos (1975) 136–52; Wolska-Conus (1989) 47–59; Montserrat (2005) 235f. For Byzantine materia medica see Scarborough (1984); Stannard (1984).

108. See, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 20.4, 25.6, 36.8–10.

109. Ibid. 30.4 [Marcos 303].

110. Sophronius, Miracles 30.5 [Marcos 303]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 52.1 [Marcos 365] on the chief doctor (archiētros) Zosimus: “And he who had promised a cure to others was not able to help himself.”

111. Sophronius, Miracles 30.6 [Marcos 303].

112. Sophronius, Miracles 30.8 [Marcos 304].

113. Sophronius, Miracles 30.9 [Marcos 304].

114. Sophronius, Miracles 30.12 [Marcos 305]. On Gesius, a famous fifth-century physician and therefore symbolic of the entire medical profession, see PLRE vol. 2; with Montserrat (2005) 239.

115. See, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 10.6, 11.1, 22.3, 23.1, 27.7, 47.3–4. At Miracles 15.6 [Marcos 274] Sophronius tells his audience, “And I shall write of the remedy through which the martyrs easily cured this affliction, lest any officious doctor think the saints applied some Hippocratic principle, and thus contemptuously mock their ineffable power and proclaim Hippocrates or Galen as the author of the cure rather than the martyrs who actually performed it.” Sophronius describes the cure as “glass, which [the saints] converted into its old form, sand, after trituration [meta tēn leiōsin]” [Marcos 274]. Paul of Aegina 6.22 uses the phrase hualos chnoōdēs (lit. “fine-powdered glass”) to describe an absorbent of some kind. Speaking of the disease aigilōps (an ophthalmic ulcer) he writes: “And fine-powdered glass sprinkled over these miraculously dries them up, as does Aloe vera mixed with powdered frankincense” [Heiberg vol. 2, 62]. Pace Montserrat (2005) 238, who refers to the cure’s “bizarre nature.”

116. P. Brown (1981) 114f.; Horden (1982) 12; Haldon (1997) 44; Chirban (2010).

117. See Sophronius, Miracles 1.10, 8.9–10; 40.5.

118. For this process of etiological differentiation see, e.g., ibid. 26.2, 30.6–7, 41.3, 45.2, 54.5. In certain instances Sophronius professes some confusion as to the cause of a disease; see ibid. 23.1: “Thus the illness was terrible and unusual. Whether it was magic that produced it or some natural symptom, I do not know. For I was able to learn only of the disease and its treatment” [Marcos 285]; also Sophronius, Miracles 52.1.

119. Criticism of doctors is ubiquitous. For accusations of incompetence see, e.g., Miracles of Artemius 3, 4, 20; for rapaciousness, ibid. 23, 32, 36.

120. For this desire see the descriptions of the saint’s cures and surgical procedures within the various rhetorical excursuses that punctuate the center of the collection ibid. 24–32, and that explicitly attempt to distance the saint from accusations of dependence on medical procedure—e.g., ibid. 24 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 143]: “So, where are the boastful Hippocrates and Galen, and the countless other doctors? Inasmuch as this kind of gynaecological disease is only a ruptured groin, such people maintain that one ought first to cut with force the patient’s folded skin wherever the outer membrane has been made to bulge because of the swelling. [Artemius] attended to none of these things.” On the antimedical nature of Artemius’s cures see also Déroche (1993) 104. For the simultaneous assimilation of the saint to doctors, as in other collections, however, see Miracles of Artemius 2, 6, 22, 38–42.

121. Cf. Miller (1985) 65f.; Déroche (1993) 105–7.

122. Haldon (1997) 52. For the same argument applied to the Miracles of Therapon see Haldon (2008). For a similar argument applied to Gregory of Tours’s Western narratives, see Van Dam (1993) 86–94.

123. See Miracles of Artemius 7 (lifting a weight), 21 (shouting and lifting a weight), 28 (falling out of bed), 30 (stretching while running), 32 (weight falling on stomach), 40 (heavy lifting). Cf. also Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 22, in which the patient is said to be afflicted with “a certain humor from bad regimen” (chumos tis ek ponēras diaitēs) [Deubner 157].

124. See Miracles of Artemius 17 and 37, in which patients who doubt the saint are afflicted with hernias. The same threat is made ibid. 8; the cause of a doubter’s hernia ibid. 15, however, is ambiguous. On sin within the Miracles of Artemius see now also Alwis (2012), who argues that the frequent reference to inflammation (phlegmonē) of the testicles within the text is “a metaphor for passion or excess.” For that metaphor cf. Sophronius, Miracles 1.6 [Marcos 244]: The saints “cured the swelling [tēn phlegmonēn] of his soul before they put an end to the inflammations on his bodily neck.”

125. Haldon’s argument is most applicable to John of Thessalonica, Miracles of Demetrius 3, in which the author describes the onset of a plague. Plague, however, was exceptional and demanded an exceptional explanation. Thus the protagonist of the previous miracle is “bright in birth, and even more resplendent in faith” but nevertheless suffers a “rupture of blood through the stomach” [Lemerle 69]. The latter must therefore be natural.

126. Sophronius, Miracles 16.1–3 [Marcos 275].

127. For such traditions see Temkin (1991) 8–17.

128. Sophronius, Miracles 21.1 [Marcos 282].

129. Sophronius, Miracles 14.2 [Marcos 271].

130. Sophronius, Miracles14.2–3 [Marcos 271f.]. Cf. Maximus Confessor, Centuries on Love 2.16 [Ceresa-Gastaldo 96]: “Passion is a movement of the soul contrary to nature.”

131. See Sophronius’s spirited defense of free will in the refutation of astrological predestination at Miracles 28.2–5.

132. Sophronius, Miracles 35.2 [Marcos 319]. See also Sophronius, Miracles 27.2 [Marcos 292]: “For we wretched men are accustomed to avenge ourselves on our fellow man not only with tortures and murderous instruments and swords, if he has done some wrong toward us, or being ruled by jealous hatred of our brother, even if he has done nothing wrong to us, still then to set upon him with poisons, abandoning our natural love for our neighbor.”

133. Sophronius, Miracles 34.2 [Marcos 315].

134. On this innocence of youth and the training of the soul cf. also Sophronius, Miracles 44.2.

135. Ibid. 38.9 [Marcos 334f.]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 37.7 [Marcos 331f.]: The patient “knew the cause, and knowing he repented, and repentant he obtained forgiveness, and with forgiveness he was corrected, and corrected he saw once again.”

136. See also Sophronius, Miracles 66.5–6, in which a healed patient undergoes a quasi resurrection.

137. Sophronius, Miracles 5.7 [Marcos 251].

138. Sophronius, Miracles 46.3 [Marcos 352]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 11.9, 23.3, 25.1, 37.9. See also ibid. 70.1–2, in which Sophronius presents the telling of his own miracle as a recapitulation of the news spread by the leper healed by Jesus at Mark 1:40–45. For similar statements cf. also Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 14, 15, 26.

139. Sophronius, Miracles 38.9.

140. Ibid. 30.8.

141. See ibid. 9.3, 23.2, 62.1.

142. See esp. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 11 [Bringel 11]. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 12–13 proceeds to describe how the divergent celestial and terrestrial persons and careers of the saints (Cyrus as monk, John as doctor) were brought into perfect union through Christ. Cf. also Schönborn (1972) 225ff., who applies a similar analysis to Sophronius’s patriarchal sermon On Saints Peter and Paul. Cf. below p. 233 n. 26.

143. Sophronius, Miracles 29.1–2 [Marcos 298]. See also Sophronius, Miracles 27.3, 34.7. Cf. Miracles of Thecla 28 [Dagron 364]: “For in knowing how to treat well those who have done some good in their lives and to punish the impious and those who dare the unholy, [Thecla] imitates, I think, the example of Christ king.”

144. See esp. Sophronius, Miracles 36.25–26, in which a patient sees an image in which the saints are supplicating Christ. Cf. ibid. 42.5–6 [Marcos 345]: “It is not us [the saints], O women, who are the lords of health, but Christ the provider and guide. . . . We offer prayers for everyone alike and cure and immediately release whoever our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, orders us to.” For a similar statement cf. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 3. On such passages, which occur in all miracle collections, see also Maraval (1981) 388; Déroche (1993) 108–10.

145. See Sophronius, Miracles 13.1 [Marcos 269], speaking of Paul’s illness at Gal. 4:13–14.

146. Sophronius, Miracles 16.4 [Marcos 275].

147. Sophronius, Miracles 1.6 [Marcos 244]. Cf. the use of apatheia at Sophronius, Miracles 69.3 and 70.8, in which it appears instead to mean “freedom from [somatic] disease.”

148. See, e.g., ibid. 33.8, 46.2.

149. Ibid. 2.1 [Marcos 247].

150. Sophronius, Miracles 2.2–3 [Marcos 247]. On the importance of faith (and the rejection of doubt) within the Miracles see also Maraval (1981) 384–87.

151. Sophronius, Miracles 69.6–7 [Marcos 393]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 48.4 (two-year wait), 48.8 (three-year wait).

152. Cf. ibid. 1.12–13 [Marcos 246], in which the saints cure the “vainglory” (to kenodoxon) of a patient’s soul through ordering him to wear a sackcloth (“which the very poor wear because it is very cheap”) and to carry drinking water on his shoulders “to the weaker brothers.”

153. Sophronius, Miracles 13.3 [Marcos 270]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 42.4 [Marcos 344], in which the saints’ surgery is said to “keep off all accidie and disease.” For the importance of patience cf. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 1; Miracles of Artemius 27.

154. On “persuasion” and “punishment”’ see Sophronius, Miracles 12.7–8 [Marcos 266] on the heretic Julian: “Sometimes also [the saints] disputed with him over dogma, proclaiming the truth heralded in the Church, and swore that here was the true proclamation of our God, Christ. But when they had done all these things and more, and could not persuade Julian, who did not want to be persuaded, again they renewed his former illness.”

155. Sophronius, Miracles 36.8 [Marcos 324].

156. On the “spiritual meaning” of illness within the patristic tradition more broadly see Larchet (1991) trans. Breck and Breck 55–77.

157. Sophronius, Miracles 29.1 [Marcos 298].

158. Sophronius, Miracles 35.5 [Marcos 320]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 42.6 [Marcos 345]: “Certain people arrive here in need of a greater correction (paideia), and others again others deserve to be healed quickly.”

159. Sophronius, Miracles 17.1 [Marcos 276].

160. See Sophronius, Miracles 28 and 49. Cf. ibid. 17.2 [Marcos 276]: “And I will recall one or two in the present narrative who received no help from the saints. So that knowing their zeal for faith and hatred of base deeds, men may hurry to please them both in life and in faith.” [Marcos 276].

161. See Sophronius, Miracles. 37.10 [Marcos 332f.]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 13.7–8. For incredulity preventing cure cf. Miracles of Thecla 25; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 21.

162. Sophronius, Miracles 16.4 [Marcos 275].

163. Sophronius, Miracles 11.9 [Marcos 264]. For comment see Schönborn (1972) 196–98.

164. On this aspect of Sophronius’s theology see Schönborn (1972) 141–47. It should be noted, however, that there is no indication within Sophronius’s Miracles that the author thinks in corresponding terms of either “one” or “two” Christological wills, as I was tempted to think in Booth (2009). Cf. below pp. 197, 265

165. Sophronius, Miracles 65.4 [Marcos 385].

166. Sophronius, Miracles 12.7 [Marcos 266].

167. Sophronius, Miracles 37.3–4 [Marcos 330f.].

168. Sophronius, Miracles 37.5–6 [Marcos 331]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 36.22 [Marcos 327]: The heretic Theodore “immediately entered the sanctuary [phōtistērion] and partook of the mysteries of Christ, and in partaking of the mysteries illuminated his soul.”

169. Sophronius, Miracles 38.4 [Marcos 333f.].

170. Sophronius, Miracles 38.10–11 [Marcos 335]. Cf. 39.10–11 [Marcos 338]: “For as [the heretic Menas] slept, he saw the saints at the blessed sanctuary and mystical, heavenly table, as if participating in the holy mysteries. They turned, and when they saw that he was not following, they turned to him, and holding rods in their hands they struck him hard and revealed to him the reason for his punishment: ‘When you see us entering into communion,’ they said, ‘why do you not partake with us? If you want to stay in our home, follow what we ordain. Where we enjoy the Master’s nourishment, there you also participate.’ And they pointed to the holy table with outstretched fingers. . . . When he woke up, he was racked with pains and had bruises as if he had been struck while awake, which bore witness to the will of the saints. Whence he got up and immediately took communion and threw off the pains of his trials. And having illuminated his soul with the grace of true faith, he gained the goodwill of the saints for the future.” See also the extra text of Sophronius, Miracles 39.5, preserved in Latin at PG 89:3, 3574A (with Gascou [2006] 146f.), referring to the eucharist in the context of the heretic Peter’s conversion.

171. Sophronius, Miracles 38.11 [Marcos 335].

172. Sophronius, Miracles 31.1 [Marcos 306].

173. Sophronius, Miracles 31.2–3 [Marcos 306f.]. On paganism in the text see also Sophronius, Miracles 54.6 (a woman who refuses to eat pork “because of the death of Adonis”), with Marcos (1975) 142 n. 101, and cf. the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 2, in which the saints force a Jewish woman to eat pork.

174. Sophronius, Miracles 31.3 [Marcos 307]. On this phenomenon see Gascou (2006) 108 n. 618. For Sophronius’s concern for ritual purity cf. the Hellenophile Gesius’s baptism at Sophronius, Miracles 30.2 [Marcos 302; cf. Odyssey 4.511]: “And when he rose out of the divine bath he impiously pronounced that line of Homer, ‘Ajax perished when he tasted the bitter water.’”

175. Sophronius, Miracles 32.1–2 [Marcos 308].

176. Sophronius, Miracles 32.5–6 [Marcos 309f.].

177. Sophronius, Miracles 32.9 [Marcos 311].

178. Sophronius, Miracles 32.10 [Marcos 311]. On ritual purity see also Egyptian Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 32, in which a supplicant prepares for the eucharist through fasting.

179. Cf. however Sophronius, Miracles 56.3–4, in which the saints offer a “blessing” (perhaps the eucharist) to a patient in the shrine’s toilets.

180. On the similarity of the eucharist to baptism in Sophronius’s Miracles see Déroche (2002) 171 n. 16; Csepregi (2006) 107.

181. See Sophronius, Miracles 11.8 (John the Deacon acts as interpreter). On the problem of dream interpretation in the various miracle collections see Déroche (2000) 160–62.

182. See Sophronius, Miracles 12.7, 32.7, 36.13, 37.3, 37.9. For the saints as clerics cf. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 18. On the Miracles of Artemius, however, see Woods (2000).

183. See also the saints’ performance of a quasi baptism in the shrine’s bath complex at Sophronius, Miracles 52.3–4; cf. ibid. 8.15. For the appropriation of liturgical acts by other saints cf. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 21; Miracles of Artemius 32, 41.

184. For the date see Dagron (1978) 17–19. It should be noted, however, that not all the miracles within the Miracles of Thecla concern incubation.

185. For the dates of the first three collections (Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 1–26), see Booth (2011a).

186. For the text’s date and composition (which still requires further examination) see Haldon (1997) 33–35; pace Nesbitt (1997) 7f.

187. For the date see Lemerle (1979–81) vol. 2, 79f. Like the Miracles of Thecla, however, not all miracles contained within John of Thessalonica’s Miracles of Demetrius concern incubation. For further miracle collections of the period see Déroche (1993) n. 1, to which we can perhaps add at least some of the miracles associated with St. George; see Festugière (1971) 259–67; Hoyland (1997) 89–91.

188. Miracles of Thecla 4 [Dagron 296].

189. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 16 [Deubner 141]. Cf. for similar statements Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 6 [Deubner 111] and 26 [Deubner 167f.].

190. See the words of patients at Miracles of Artemius 5 (Crisafulli and Nesbitt 86: “I was diseased in the testicles and waited upon saint Artemius in the Church of Saint John the Baptist at Oxeia, and my sin prevented me from being healed”) and 35 (Crisafulli and Nesbitt 184–86: “My children, my sins are impeding me; I am not worthy to obtain a cure on account of my deeds.”).

191. Miracles of Thecla 6 [Dagron 300].

192. See Miracles of Thecla 7, 9, 32; Dagron (1978) 75; Davis (2001) 55f.

193. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 5 [Deubner 108f.]. For the eucharist within this collection cf. also Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 10, with Csepregi (2006) 103f. Elsewhere in the collection conversion is guaranteed not by the eucharist but by baptism; see Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 2, 9.

194. See ibid. 10, 26. The vigil is also mentioned during the preface to the third collection as the context for healed supplicants to recount how they had been healed [Deubner 154].

195. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 7 [Deubner 112]. See also, on the importance within the text of prayer (though not preparatory rituals), Csepregi (2002) 96.

196. See Miracles of Thecla 33 [esp. Dagron 376–78]. The same miracle also contains a reference to the objective effect of the eucharist, in which attendees at the saint’s annual festival are said to come “to participate in the mysteries, to be sanctified in both body and soul like a new initiate” [Dagron 376]. See also Miracles of Thecla 26, which describes the celebration of an annual vigil for the saint at Dalisandus, and 41, which again concerns the saint’s feast.

197. Ibid. 29 [Dagron 368]. Cf. also Miracles of Thecla 19 [Dagron 340–42]. On such acts in the Miracles of Thecla see Dagron (1978) 103.

198. For this absence see Csepregi (2006) 118, who links it to the simultaneous absence of pagans and heretics from the collection.

199. On the importance of prayer see esp. Sophronius, Miracles 40.4.

200. See, e.g., Miracles of Artemius 4 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 84]: “And when he reached the Church of the Forerunner he made a votive lamp according to the prevailing custom with wine and oil.” Cf. Miracles of Artemius 12, 21, 38, 45. On votive lamps see Nesbitt (1997) 22.

201. Miracles of Artemius 34 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 180]. Cf. also Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 3.

202. Miracles of Artemius 33 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 174].

203. Miracles of Artemius [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 176].

204. For further references to ritual context see Miracles of Artemius 29, set during the vigil; 37 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 194], in which a patient is said to have completed “the night office” (tēn pannuchon humnōidian); 39 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 204], which refers to “the doxology of the lamplight service” (tēn epiluchnion doxologian). The lamplight service is also mentioned in Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 7.

205. Miracles of Artemius 15 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 102]. The position ep’ eleutherikēi huporgiai is no doubt equivalent to that of philoponos within Sophronius, Miracles.

206. Miracles of Artemius 18 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 114–20]. On this society see also Nesbitt (1997) 24.

207. Miracles of Artemius 36 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 190].

208. Miracles of Artemius [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 192]. See also Miracles of Artemius 23, the subject of which is a “certain priest” of the saint’s church; 30, in which the subject becomes a warden of the church (prosmonarios); and 38, concerning George, who became a reader (anagnōstēs). For the clergy at the shrine see also Déroche (1993) 100.

209. See Montserrat (2005) 234, who claims that only two miracles occur outside the shrine (Sophronius, Miracles 8, which occurs en route to Mareotis, and 14, which occurs at the entrance to the saint’s shrine). To this we may add Sophronius, Miracles 33.5, 33.7, 53.3, and perhaps also 9 (which takes place upon seeing the shrine rather than within it) and 11 (which happens at a house next door to the shrine). See also the statement of the saints’ omnipresence ibid. 8.4 and 35.11, although such claims are a platitude of the genre; cf. Miracles of Thecla 10, 15, 26; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 13.

210. Beyond references to the eucharist and sanctuary see the unique reference at Sophronius, Miracles 68.6 [Marcos 391], in which the saints prescribe to a patient the repetition of “a certain written psalm of those sung in their honor.” It is telling, however, that in contrast to the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 7, where psalmody suffices to heal, here Cyrus and John also prescribe a little cake (pastellon). For other scattered (but rare) references to ritual see Marcos (1975) 33–39.

211. Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 49 [Festugière 398f.].

212. For the suggestion Déroche (1995) 125.

213. This literal centrality is also remarked upon in Csepregi (2006) 109.

214. Cf. Booth (2009).

215. See Van Dam (1993) 89–105 on the miracles composed by Gregory of Tours; and esp. Moreira (2000) 134. On the clerical monopoly of the holy in the West, in contrast to the East, see P. Brown (1971) 95 and (1976).

216. On the potential modification of praise for the saints under pressure from clerical authorities see also Déroche (2000) 164, with n. 71.

217. See also Déroche (2000) 164, who notes also Sophronius’s attempts to include the eucharist within his scheme. Maraval (1981) 393 claims also that Sophronius “seeks to elevate the tone” of the genre.

218. For the critique of wealth within the text see esp. Sophronius, Miracles 24, but also 6.2, 21.5, 69.5. On the saints as lovers of the poor see ibid. 46.5, 56.1. On this theme see also Maraval (1981) 392; Déroche (2006); Holman (2008). Despite Sophronius’s rhetoric, all miracle collections imply that the rich were given preferential treatment at incubatory shrines (by being allowed to sleep closer to the saints’ tombs); see Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 21; Sophronius, Miracles 24.4; Miracles of Artemius 17.

219. For the international flavor of the saints’ clientele see Sophronius, Miracles 51.1, with Montserrat (1998) 274–76. For international visitors see also Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 1.

220. Nor, it should be said, is that inclusive vision particular to the genre, for it can be contrasted, for example, with the Miracles of Thecla, where the saint’s clientele is also elite (pace Dagron [1978] 73–79). See, e.g., Miracles of Thecla 13, 15, 18–20, 30, 35–40, 42–44. The sole named poor supplicant within the text must even be assimilated to his superiors before he can be cured; see ibid. 23 [Dagron 348]: “For even if this man was counted among the poor and the artisans, he was nevertheless judged worthy of a miracle by the martyr and counted by her as equal in rank to the most powerful and far-famed.” Cf. also John of Thessalonica’s Miracles of Demetrius, in which named supplicants are always of significant social status (clerics, bureaucrats, et al.); see Skedros (1999) 115–20; and, on the shrine’s iconography, ibid. 97–100, 147; Cormack (1985) 78–94.

221. See Sophronius, Miracles 12.7 [Marcos 266].

222. For these heresies see, respectively, Sophronius, Miracles 12.6, 12.11, 12.17, 36.7, 37.4.

223. For the reference to Chalcedon see ibid. 39.5, with more text preserved in the Latin at PG 87:3, 3574A (also mentioning the council). Schönborn (1972) 66 n. 47, and Flusin (1992a) 65, both note the (comparatively) moderate stance in this period. On the doctrine of the text see also Maraval (1981) 389; contra Montserrat (2005) 231.

224. Sophronius, Miracles 39.11 [Marcos 338].

225. The main sources for these events are Ps.-Sebēos, History 33–34; Anonymous Chronicle to 724 [Brooks 146]; Theophanes, Chronicle A.M. 6099–6105; Agapius, Universal History [Vasiliev 450]; Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 10.25, 11.1; Anonymous Chronicle to 1234 92. For the narrative in greater detail see, e.g., Stratos (1968–78) vol. 1, 103–7; Foss (1975) and (2003); Flusin (1992b) vol. 2, 67–83; Kaegi (1973) and (2003) 67–78.

226. Sophronius, Miracles 69.2 [Marcos 391f.]. In this light we should also note the reason stated for the papal librarian Anastasius Bibliothecarius’s translation of the Miracles of Cyrus and John into Latin: that Sophronius was a fine example of resistance to “the rulers of the Christian world” (cited in Neil [2006b] 54).